UNM Health Sciences Team Discovered new estrogen receptor and are studying its effects on Advanced Endometrial Cancer
Albuquerque, NM – Congresswoman Heather Wilson announced today that the University of New Mexico (UNM) Health Sciences Center has received a federal grant of $285,000 to study uterine cancer and the effects of a G-protein known as GPR-30. The grant comes from the National Cancer Institute and will support on-going studies at UNM.
According to UNM, collaborating scientists from the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University recently made a remarkable breakthrough in breast and women’s cancers. Publishing in two top tier medical research journals, Science and Nature Cell Biology, this team has discovered a novel receptor for the female hormone estrogen.
Eric Prossnitz, PhD, Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology at UNM, along with colleagues at the UNM Cancer Center and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at New Mexico State University who are members of the UNM Cancer Center’s Women’s Cancers Research Program, discovered that a novel G-protein coupled receptor on cell surfaces known as GPR30 binds estrogen.
UNM officials say this discovery will have a dramatic impact on our understanding of how women get breast and other female cancers and will lead us to better diagnostics and therapies for these diseases.
The grant Wilson announced today will help further that research.
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