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Hormones And Receptors In Endometrial Cancer, David Bender, Thomas Buekers, Kimberly Leslie

David P Bender

The uterine endometrium is exquisitely sensitive to hormones, in particular estrogen and progesterone and to a lesser extent androgens and glucocorticoids. These hormones tightly regulate the complex functioning of the female reproductive tract and are intimately involved in controlling the growth, development, and remodeling of reproductive tissues as well as the cyclic changes that occur during the menstrual cycle. Steroids function by binding to nuclear receptor proteins that act as transcription factors to modulate the expression of genes, though many non-genomic effects for steroids have also been described. An imbalance of the hormones leads to cancer. In particular, endometrial carcinogenesis …