“…Current experimental therapies used to treat breast cancer (tamoxifen, retinoic acid, and GH-releasing hormone analogues) have led to a decrease of circulating IGF-I levels, suggesting that the antitumor effect of these agents, at least in part, is due to reduced circulating IGF-I (35,37,38). It is shown that the activation of IGF-I/IGF-IR/ IRS-1 leads to activation of two main proliferative pathways, the Ras-MAPK-extracellular signal-regulated kinase pathway and the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-AKT pathway, which stimulate cell cycle progression through cyclin D accumulation in the nucleus and inhibition of p27kip1 expression (39,40). Stimulation of IGF-IR/IRS-1 can also destabilize adhesion and stimulate cytoskeleton reorganization through modulation of the phosphorylation signals from adhesion molecules (integrins, RACK1, focal adhesion kinase, Cas, paxillin, E-cadherin; refs.…”