Joyce O'Shaughnessy, MD

ONCOLOGY® recently sat down with Joyce A. O’Shaughnessy, MD, to discuss the recent trends in breast cancer treatment and the avalanche of agents moving through the development pipeline that have the potential to redefine the accepted standards of care.

In this interview we discuss the current challenges to treating triple-negative breast cancer and look at avenues of promising research.

Triple-negative breast cancer is aggressive, has a high rate of metastases, and carries a poor prognosis. Dr. Joyce O’Shaughnessy, who will be presenting at the Miami Breast Cancer Conference, discusses an overview of new therapies for triple-negative breast cancer.

Gemcitabine has been evaluated in combination with paclitaxel,docetaxel, anthracyclines, vinorelbine, and cisplatin as first-line treatmentand after prior chemotherapy in patients with metastatic breastcancer. Results with gemcitabine/taxane combinations have been especiallyencouraging, with these combinations providing promising outcomeswith regard both to tumor response and tolerability. The combinationof gemcitabine and paclitaxel has garnered particular interestfor further phase III evaluation on the basis of high response rates anddurable responses in both treatment-naive and treatment-experiencedpatients, including anthracycline-pretreated patients.

A recent phase III trial demonstrated that the combination of capecitabine (Xeloda) and docetaxel (Taxotere) significantly improved objective tumor response rate, time to disease progression, and overall survival compared