Summary
Although cancer chemotherapy or endocrine ablation therapy is effective by itself to some extent for advanced breast cancer, a synergistic effect would be expected if the both treatments were combined. It was demonstrated in the DMBA-induced rat mammary tumors that chemotherapy after oophorectomy was most effective to tumor regression with no mortality. Thus anticancer chemotherapy was suggested to be effective under suitable conditions caused by endocrine ablation therapy, and the “hormone conditioned cancer chemotherapy” for breast cancer was proposed.
It was also noted that chemotherapy after adrenalectomy was hazardous to tumor-bearing or non-tumor-bearing rats. In the rats with auto-transplanted adrenal, however, the use of chemotherapeutic agents was as safe and effective as in normal animals. Therefore, the adrenal gland seems to be necessary for maintaining the host defence against cancer or chemotherapeutic agents.
In this respect, our modified endocrine ablation therapy; i.e. left suprarenal-inferior mesenteric venous shunt combined with oophorectomy and right adrenalectomy, is more beneficial for advanced breast cancer than usual bilateral adrenalectomy, since the adrenal gland is preserved.
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Nomura, Y., Inokuchi, K., Hattori, T. et al. Hormone conditioned cancer chemotherapy for advanced breast cancer with special references to biological significance of adrenal gland. Japanese Journal of Surgery 1, 11–18 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02468537
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02468537