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Hormonal therapy

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Hormonal therapy is using medicine or surgery to reduce estrogen in the body. Your doctor may also call this type of treatment endocrine or anti-estrogen therapy. It is used for cancers that depend on estrogen or progesterone to grow. These types of cancers may be called hormone receptor-positive or estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.

In ductal carcinoma in situ and early-stage breast cancer, hormonal therapy can

  • reduce the risk of the disease recurring, or coming back
  • prevent new breast cancers
  • improve survival

In metastatic breast cancer, the goal of hormonal therapy is to shrink or control the cancer.

This section will help you understand how hormonal therapy works, the impact of your menopausal status, the types of medicines and surgeries available and things you can do when you finish treatment.

In this section:

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Related resources

Targeted therapy for hormone receptor-positive breast cancer

10/14/24 | BY: Sameer Gupta, Pallav K. Mehta

Targeted therapies are treatments that target specific proteins or markers on or within cancer cells that help cancer cells grow. There are many different kinds of targeted therapy, including CDK 4/6 inhibitors.

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Ribociclib

09/18/24 | BY: Sameer Gupta

Ribociclib (Kisqali), a targeted therapy, is the second CDK 4/6 inhibitor to be approved by the FDA. It targets two specific kinases, or enzymes, that help tumor cells grow and divide.

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Capivasertib

02/03/24 | BY: Sameer Gupta

Capivasertib (Truqap) is a targeted therapy used to treat hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative locally advanced or metastatic breast cancers that test positive for certain gene mutations

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Abemaciclib

12/01/23 | BY: Sameer Gupta

Abemaciclib (Verzenio) is a targeted therapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat hormone receptor-positive breast cancer.

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Tamoxifen

08/05/23 | BY: Reshma L. Mahtani

Tamoxifen is a type of hormonal therapy called a SERM, or selective estrogen receptor modulator, a medicine that prevents estrogen signals from getting to breast cancer cells.

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Hormone receptor-positive MBC

07/26/23 | BY: Pallav K. Mehta

Learn more about hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer, which means the stage IV breast cancer is hormone-sensitive.

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Hormone receptor-positive

05/23/23 | BY: Reshma L. Mahtani

Hormone receptor-positive, or HR-positive, breast cancer grows in response to the hormones estrogen and progesterone. These hormones occur naturally in the body and prompt cell action in different ways.

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Types of hormonal therapy

05/23/23 | BY: Jennifer Winn

Some hormonal therapy medicines stop the body from making estrogen; others prevent estrogen from helping the cancer cell grow.

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 | 6 Min. Read |

Palbociclib

04/19/23 | BY: Sameer Gupta

Palbociclib (Ibrance), a targeted therapy, was the first CDK 4/6 inhibitor to be approved by the FDA. It targets two specific kinases, or enzymes, that help tumor cells grow and divide.

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 | 5 Min. Read |

Elacestrant

02/08/23 | BY: Virginia Kaklamani

Elacestrant (Orserdu) is a hormonal therapy used to treat metastatic breast cancer.

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 | 5 Min. Read |
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About this page
Glossary
About LBBC

Reviewed and updated: May 4, 2018

Reviewed by: Jennifer Winn, MD, MS , M. Tish Knobf, PhD, RN, FAAN, AOCN , Ann H. Partridge, MD, MPH , Edith Perez, MD , Betty Harris, RN, MSN, WHNP , Katharine Campbell, PhD, LCSW , Betsy Clark, MSW, LCSW

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