Prostate Cancer: Beta Control Your Hormones

Differentiation status influences the prognosis for localized prostate cancer. In this issue of Cancer Cell, Mak and coworkers describe a signaling pathway involving estrogen receptor beta (ER beta) that governs whether prostate carcinoma cells maintain an epithelial phenotype or undergo epithelial-mesenchymal transition, suggesting that ER beta would have prognostic or therapeutic value.