But androgen receptors were found to be nearly non-existent in the brains of newborn animals.
In women there are more oestrogen receptors and in men more androgen receptors present.
Androgen-Independant Prostate Cancer is what all of these treatments are trying to treat, not cure.
It was reasonable to think, as many people did, that androgen receptors which respond to male hormones were mediating the manly transformation.
Katie has androgen insensitivity syndrome, which was only discovered when she had a hernia operation when she was six.
Androgen is the family of hormones that controls the development of masculine traits.
One form many U.S. male patients are asked to fill out is a test for Androgen Deficiency in Aging Men (ADAM).
Without male hormone receptors to respond to testosterone, the researchers started to suspect androgen receptors were not the players they had been assumed to be.
In a series of experiments with mice, he and his colleagues found that drug-resistant patients actually had elevated (not lower) levels of androgen receptors.
These males still had androgen receptors in their muscles and elsewhere, so they had masculine bodies, and they experienced the testosterone surge and responded to normally circulating testosterone.
In their study, published this week in Neuron, the researchers decided to look at male mice which had been genetically engineered to lack androgen receptors in their nervous systems.
One theory is that vitamin D interferes with the effect of the androgen receptor, which is stimulated by hormones such as testosterone and implicated in prostate cancer.
Scouring patent databases, Dr. Jung discovered a compound made by the former French drug maker Roussel Uclaf that locked onto the androgen receptor about 100 times more strongly than the commonly used prostate-cancer drug, Casodex.
Conventional wisdom was that once a patient relapsed, the so-called androgen receptors structures that protrude from tumor cells like a lock to attract the testosterone "key" that activates them and promotes tumor growth were no longer driving the disease.
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