The role of estrogen receptor β (ERβ) in malignant diseases—A new potential target for antiproliferative drugs in prevention and treatment of cancer

The discovery of ERβ in the middle of the 1990s represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of estrogen signaling. It has turned out that estrogen action is not mediated by one receptor, ERα, but by two balancing factors, ERα and ERβ, which are often antagonistic to one another. Excitingly, ERβ has been shown to be widespread in the body and to be involved in a multitude of physiological and pathophysiological events. This has led to a strong interest of the pharmaceutical industry to target ERβ by drugs against various diseases. In this review, focus is on the role of ERβ in malignant diseases where the anti proliferative activity of ERβ gives hope of new therapeutic approaches.