A Matter of Health

Making the leap from cells to people

By Ruth SoRelle, M.P.H.

Around the world, women with early and advanced stage breast cancer take tamoxifen to interfere with the action of estrogen – a hormone – on their cancer cells. Simply put, in some kinds of breast cancer, estrogen spurs the growth of malignant cells. Tamoxifen interferes with the action of estrogen and puts its cancer-growing activity on hold.

The understanding of how estrogen acts, however, began decades ago when scientists such as Bert O'Malley, M.D., chair of the Baylor College of Medicine department of molecular and cellular biology, began research into how hormones act in the cells. His work began with the effect of estrogen on the chicken oviduct, that organ in the fowl that goes from the ovaries to the outside, allowing the bird to lay an egg.

The leap between studies in the laboratory and the development of a drug took many years, but now many more such drugs are in developmental stages. Think, however, what would have happened had there been no scientists to ask the question about what the hormone actually does in the cell?

There is always a creative tension between people who want to see targeted research – that is the work aimed specifically at the disease – and those who work in the laboratory, seeking answers to fundamental questions in biology. There is certainly room for both kinds of research.

However, there is a move to push targeted research, and there is fear that the move could reduce the funds going to basic research, which will answer many of those fundamental questions.

Sometimes, a scientist will ask a question without an idea of the journey on which he or she is embarked. A question that might seem to answer a question about cancer could also have implications for the heart or the skin or fertility.

Those journeys have led to many seminal discoveries upon which much of our current treatments are based. Without the questions, there would have been no answers.

My father once told me there were no dumb questions. He was right. But it would be very foolish of us to impede the ability of those who know how to ask questions to do that and then proceed to find the answers.