The effect of chronic (CCR) and intermittent (ICR) caloric restriction on serum insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I levels and mammary tumor (MT) development was investigated. Tenweek-old MMTV-TGF-α female mice were assigned to ad libitum-fed (AL; AIN-93M diet), ICR [3-week 50% caloric restriction using AIN-93M-mod diet, 2× protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals followed by 3 weeks of daily 100% AL consumption of AIN-93M (∼75% of AL for each 6-week cycle)], and CCR (calorie and nutrient intake matched for each 6-week ICR cycle) groups. Half of the mice from each group were sacrificed at 79 (end of restriction) or 82 (end of refeeding) weeks of age. Serum was obtained at euthanasia and in cycles 1, 3, 5, 8, and 11. MT incidence was 71.0%, 35.4%, and 9.1% for AL, CCR, and ICR mice. ICRRestricted mice had significantly lower terminal serum IGF-I and IGF-I/IGF binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) ratio than CCR, ICR-Refed, and AL mice. There were no differences in terminal IGFBP-3. Final body, internal, and mammary fat pad weights correlated positively with IGF-I and negatively with IGFBP-3. Few changes were found for protein expression of IGF-IRα and IGFBP-3 in mammary tissue and MTs. During the study, IGF-I levels of ICR-Restricted mice were reduced, whereas refeeding allowed partial recovery. For all groups, elevated IGF-I levels preceded MT detection, although not all values were significant versus mice without MTs. However, the specific role of IGF-I in the protective effect of calorie restriction remains to be determined. These results confirm that ICR prevents MT development to a greater extent than CCR.Worldwide, each year, approximately 1 million women are newly diagnosed with breast cancer (1). This malignancy is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer death in women (2). Searching for new ways of prevention and early detection and for physiologic and (or) pathophysiologic markers of breast malignances is a prevalent area of current medical-biological studies.Insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I is a peptide growth factor with demonstrated roles in mammary gland development (3, 4). Both IGF-I and its primary signaling receptor, IGF-IR, are present in the developing mammary gland (5-8). Additionally, the high-affinity IGF binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3; ref. 9) is also found in this tissue and its expression correlates with specific stages of the progression of mammary epithelial growth and maturation (10). In particular, IGF-I and its signaling pathway (s) have important roles in regulating cellular proliferation, growth, and apoptosis, resulting in interest of this regulatory system to mammary tumorigenesis (11-13).It is interesting to note that laboratory investigation of the relation of IGF-I to mammary/breast cancer was motivated by epidemiologic/clinical research (14). These studies have generally supported an increased risk of breast cancer in association with elevated serum levels of IGF-I in premenopausal women but not in those women who are postmenopausal as summarized in several recent meta-analyse...