Connecting estrogen receptor function, transcriptional repression, and E-cadherin expression in breast cancer

A recent paper in Cell (Fujita et al., 2003) demonstrates that MTA3, a novel component of the Mi-2/NuRD transcriptional repression complex, is an estrogen receptor-regulated inhibitor of the Snail zinc finger transcription factor in breast cancer. Given the important role of Snail in repressing E-cadherin transcription and the function of E-cadherin as a tumor suppressor protein and regulator of epithelial architecture, the findings offer potentially significant new insights into cancer pathogenesis.