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Over the past 20 years research in my laboratory has focused on the role of calcium regulating hormones in health and disease. First, my laboratory is trying to elucidate how 1, 25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 1, 25(OH) 2D3, the active form of vitamin D, influences cell growth and differentiation in the skeleton and in cancer cells. An extension of these studies is to elaborate new therapeutic strategies with vitamin D derivatives in osteoporosis and in cancer. For this purpose we developed animal models to study the efficacy of vitamin D and its analogs in models of osteoporosis and cancer. In collaboration with colleagues in Australia and in the US we discovered that a lack of vitamin D results in fat accumulation in bone and muscle with deleterious consequences for the musculoskeletal system. We also reported that a lack of vitamin D leads to accelerated development of breast cancer. Another major focus of our聽 research activities has been to establish the role of parathyroid hormone related protein (PTHrP) in tumor initiation, growth and metastasis This has led to the development of a novel targeted therapy against breast cancer using monoclonal antibodies raised against PTHrP. Finally, a recent focus of our research activities has been to elucidate the role of circulating tumor cells in breast cancer progression in view of identifying specific markers of skeletal metastasis in breast and prostate cancer. The goal of these studies is to develop targeted therapies in cancer based on the unique profile of cancer cells that are refractory to most chemotherapeutic interventions.