How Does Hormone Therapy Work for Cancer Treatment?

What is Hormone Therapy?

Some types of cancer are very sensitive to hormones. These tend to be cancers that develop from hormone-sensitive tissues like the breasts, ovaries, uterus, and prostate. Hormone therapy is a useful tool for controlling the growth of these types of cancer. It can work in several ways to keep cancer cells from getting the hormones they need to make copies of themselves. It plays a key role in the treatment of many breast and prostate cancers. 

How Does Hormone Therapy Work for Cancer Treatment?

Hormone therapy does not always mean using hormones as a treatment. More often, it modifies your hormones or stops the cancer cells from being able to receive them. Hormone therapy can work in three different ways to stop cancer cells from using hormones. 

• Stop the body from making the targeted hormone
• Modify the hormone so the cancer cells cannot use it
• Block the hormone from attaching to cancer cells

Hormone replacement therapy is often used as a treatment before surgery to shrink tumors (neoadjuvant therapy) or decrease the risk of their return (adjuvant therapy). It is usually combined with chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or radiation therapy. 

Hormone therapy may come as an oral treatment that you take at home. It may also be an injection or IV treatment that you receive in our comfortable infusion center. How often you receive treatment will depend on your individualized treatment plan.