Activated estrogen receptor (ER␣) plays a critical role in breast cancer development and is a major target for drug treatment. Serine phosphorylation within the N-terminal domain (NTD) contributes to ER␣ activation and may also cause drug resistance. Previous biochemical identification of phosphorylated ER␣ residues was limited to protein artificially overexpressed in transfected cell lines. We report mass spectrometric methods that have allowed the identification of a new site within the NTD of ER␣ isolated from cultured human breast cancer cells. Immunoprecipitation, trypsin digestion, and analysis by nano-LC-ESI-MS/MS (Q-STAR, MDS Sciex) and vMALDI-MS n (Finnigan™ LTQ™, Thermo-Electron) identified peptides containing 8 of 14 serine residues within the NTD, one being partially phosphorylated Ser-167, known but not previously reported by MS. Chymotrypsin digestion revealed other known sites at Ser-102/104/106 and 118. Tandem methods developed for the peptide containing Ser-118 and the use of hypothesis-driven experiments-i.e., the assumption that an intact phosphopeptide showing no molecular ion might yield fragment ions including loss of phosphoric acid in vMALDI-MS/MS-allowed the identification of a novel site at Ser-154. Quantitation by selected reaction monitoring demonstrated 6-fold and 2.5-fold increases in Ser-154 phosphorylation in estradiol-and EGF-treated cells, respectively, compared to controls, confirmed by immunoblotting with a novel rabbit polyclonal antibody. Thus, the protein isolation and MS strategies described here can facilitate discovery of novel phosphorylation sites within low abundance, clinically important cancer targets like ER␣, and may thereby contribute to our understanding of the role of phosphorylation in the development of breast cancer. (J Am