Celebrating a Milestone in Cancer Research
Posted in Lombardi Stories | Tagged breast cancer, breast cancer research, cancer, estrogen and breast cancer, Marc Lippman
(August 8, 2025) — This month marks the 50th anniversary of a pivotal moment in cancer research that has led to life-extending and lifesaving treatments for the thousands of people who develop breast cancer each year.
On August 14, 1975, physician-scientist and Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center member Marc E. Lippman, MD, MACP, FRCP, professor of oncology, and his colleague Gail Bolan, MD, published “Oestrogen-responsive human breast cancer in long term tissue culture” in the journal Nature.
“The paper showed for the first time, and quite surprisingly, that the hormone estrogen can drive the growth of breast cancer,” recalls fellow researcher Anton Wellstein, MD, PhD, professor of oncology and pharmacology at Georgetown University School of Medicine. “Marc used a cultured cell line from patients, MCF7 cells, to show that in this fundamental discovery paper. We still use that cell line today in our work, and that finding impacted the understanding of the dependence of breast cancer growth on hormones significantly.”
Estrogen (or oestrogen), a naturally occurring hormone, is essential for many biological functions, including breast development. Ironically, it also plays a significant role in breast cancer development and growth, particularly in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer.
At the time of the publication, Lippman worked as leader of the breast cancer section of the medicine branch at the National Cancer Institute, where he was a senior investigator from 1974 to 1988. He then became director of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1988 to 2001 before moving to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and then to Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami. He returned to Georgetown Lombardi in 2018.
“A remarkable aspect of this publication is that it was met with a tsunami of opposition by people who couldn’t reproduce the study,” recalls Lippman. “When, eventually, our conclusions were shown to be entirely correct it provided a very lucky impetus to our work.”
Breast cancer researcher Anna Tate Riegel, PhD, vice president for research and vice dean of biomedical graduate education, says Lippman’s work was significant in advancing the science.
“Marc’s work showed for the first time that the hormone estrogen had direct effects on breast cancer cells, promoting their rapid growth,” she says. “This was a major unanswered question at that time. His paper expanded our understanding of the complex interplay of hormones and their direct effects on many cancers and opened the doors to new therapeutic approaches.”
Breast cancer oncologist Sandra Swain, MD, professor of oncology and Georgetown Lombardi member says Lippman’s finding dramatically changed the trajectory of breast cancer treatment.
“His research was a groundbreaking insight that laid the foundation for endocrine therapy as we know it today,” she says.
In the years of research that followed Lippman’s published findings, drugs like tamoxifen, raloxifene, anastrozole, letrozole and exemestane were developed and are now routinely used to block estrogen or the production of estrogen in the treatment of breast cancer. The life expectancy in 1950 for breast cancer was less than 25%. Today, in part due to treatments for ER+ cancer, life expectancy is above 90%.
“Over the past 50 years, Marc has distinguished himself as an incisive, brilliant and visionary physician-scientist whose energy remains undiminished,” says breast cancer oncologist Claudine Isaacs, MD, professor of oncology and medicine and associate director for clinical research at Georgetown Lombardi.
Swain, who worked in the breast cancer section of the medicine branch at the NCI with Lippman, credits him for inspiring her research career. “I had the privilege of working with him at the National Cancer Institute, where his scientific rigor and passion for discovery deeply shaped my own career.”