UC Berkeley

BACKGROUND: Menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) is recommended for only five years to treat vasomotor symptoms and vulvovaginal atrophy because of safety concerns with long-term treatment. We investigated the ability of 2,3,4-trihydroxychalcone (2,3,4-THC) to modulate estrogen receptor (ER)-mediated responses in order to find drug candidates that could potentially prevent the adverse effects of long-term MHT treatment. METHODS: Transfection assays, real time-polymerase chain reaction, and microarrays were used to evaluate the effects of 2,3,4-THC on gene regulation. Radioligand binding studies were used to determine if 2,3,4-THC binds to ERα. Cell proliferation was examined in MCF-7 breast cancer cells by using growth curves and flow cytometry. Western blots were used to determine if 2,3,4-THC alters the E2 activation of the MAPK pathway and degradation of ERα. Chromatin immunoprecipitation was used to measure ERα binding to genes. RESULTS: The 2,3,4-THC/E2 combination produced a synergistic activation with ERα on reporter and endogenous genes in human U2OS osteosarcoma cells. Microarrays identified 824 genes that we termed reprogrammed genes because they were not regulated in U2OS-ERα cells unless they were treated with 2,3,4-THC and E2 at the same time. 2,3,4-THC blocked the proliferation of MCF-7 cells by preventing the E2-induced activation of MAPK and c-MYC transcription. The antiproliferative mechanism of 2,3,4-THC differs from selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) because 2,3,4-THC did not bind to the E2 binding site in ERα like SERMs. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that 2,3,4-THC may represent a new class of ERα modulators that do not act as a direct agonists or antagonists. We consider 2,3,4-THC to be a reprogramming compound, since it alters the activity of ERα on gene regulation and cell proliferation without competing with E2 for binding to ERα. The addition of a reprogramming drug to estrogens in MHT may offer a new strategy to overcome the adverse proliferative effects of estrogen in MHT by reprogramming ERα as opposed to an antagonist mechanism that involves blocking the binding of estrogen to ERα.