Breast cancer is one of the most widely distributed cancer diseases in women. Breast
carcinomas derive from the epithelial lining of the milk ducts and the duct lobules. 1α, 25
dihydroxyvitamin D3 [1, 25(OH) 2D3], the biologically active form of vitamin D that interacts with
vitamin D receptor. It prevents and inhibits the growth of breast cancer cells by arresting the cancer
cells replication cycles, promoting apoptosis, inhibiting invasion, metastasis and angiogenesis. The
mechanism of action is not well fully identified, the vitamin D modulate the expression of myc, fos,
jun genes and up regulate of p53, Rb genes. In addition, it inhibits expression of aromatase enzyme
through inhibiting production of cox-2 enzyme and increase expression of 15-hydroxyprostaglandin
dehydrogenase. Although much of attention has been directed in recent years to development new
analogous of vitamin D3 as potential therapeutic agent in breast cancer therapy, addition of vitamin
D3 to chemotherapy has been found to potentiate their anticancer effect and associated with
reduction of their toxicity. In this review, I try to emphasize the role of vitamin D3 in potentiating
therapy of breast cancer.
Keywords: Vitamin D, breast cancer, cancer, analogues of vitamin D, Libya

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