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Credit: VCU Massey Cancer Center The hormone prolactin has long been understood to play a vital role in breast growth and development and the production of milk during pregnancy. But a pair of recent studies conducted at VCU Massey Cancer Center finds strong evidence that prolactin also acts as a major contributor to breast cancer development and that the hormone could inform the creation of targeted drugs to treat multiple forms of the disease. Hormones have proteins on their cell surface called receptors that receive and send biological messages and regulate cell function. Through research published in npj Breast Cancer, VCU Massey Cancer Center researcher Charles Clevenger, M.D., Ph.D., and his lab discovered a new, altered form of the prolactin receptor called the human prolactin receptor intermediate isoform (hPRLrI) that directly drives breast cancer. The researchers observed that this modified version of the prolactin receptor interacted with other forms of the ....