CHICAGO-Zoledronic acid (Zometa) and adjuvant endrocrine therapy lowered the risk of disease recurrence in premenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer, according to the results of a major European trial. The bisphosphonate is already used to prevent bone loss in women undergoing adjuvant endocrine therapy for breast cancer.
The Cancer International Research Group (CIRG), a division of TRIO (Translational Research in Oncology) announced that, based on its study BCIRG 006, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new regimen known as TCH (docetaxel [Taxotere] and carboplatin combined with trastuzumab [Herceptin]) for the adjuvant treatment of HER2-positive early breast cancer. The AC-TH regimen (doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide followed by docetaxel and trastuzumab), also investigated in the BCIRG 006 study, received approval at the same time. This is the first taxane-based non–anthracycline-containing chemotherapy combined with trastuzumab to receive FDA approval.
Many women with a faulty breast cancer gene could be at greater risk of the disease due to extra risk-amplifying genes, according to research published recently in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
A novel biweekly dosing schedule of capecitabine (Xeloda) enabled safe delivery of higher daily doses in the treatment of advanced breast cancer, according to an investigational study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Genetic variations in the body’s receptor for vitamin D could increase the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women, according to a study published in the journal Breast Cancer Research.
In this issue of ONCOLOGY we honor and celebrate the career and contributions of Martin D. Abeloff, MD, who died last year. Marty saw his first patient with breast cancer in 1972 and cared for his last such patient shortly before his death in 2007.
Neoadjuvant lapatinib (Tykerb) decreased tumorigenic stem cells in primary breast cancers, Jenny Chang, MD, of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, reported at the 6th European Breast Cancer Conference.
SAN DIEGO-Even one alcoholic drink a day can raise the risk of breast cancer, according to an analysis of 184,418 postmenopausal women in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study presented at the 2008 American Association of Cancer Research annual meeting (abstract 4168).
A HER2/neu peptide–based T-cell immunotherapy that reduces recurrences in low HER2 expressors could be important for patients ineligible for trastuzumab.
Breast cancer treatments today are likely to cause less physical deformity from surgery than a half-century ago, but are more complex and extend over a longer period of time. Women today are often well informed about the details of their cancer diagnosis and prognosis, and are increasingly involved in shared decision-making regarding treatment.
In her article on the psychological and social aspects of breast cancer, Dr. Ganz pays fitting tribute to the pioneering and prescient efforts of a great man who tried hard to bring more humanity into the management of the disease.
The first generation of clinical trials addressing adjuvant treatment questions in breast cancer has confirmed the important role of endocrine manipulations and chemotherapy, improving disease-free and overall survival.
Worldwide, breast cancer is by far the most frequent cancer affecting women, with over 1 million new cases each year, and the leading cause of female cancer-related deaths. During the past decade, substantial progress has been made in the treatment of breast cancer, due to focused collaborative efforts in education, practice, and research.
The paper by Vogel is an interesting personal review of the use of selective estrogen-receptor modulators (SERMs) to prevent breast cancer, raising many important issues and concerns related to this controversial topic.
Novel agents are adding to the wide choices of standard chemotherapies already available. This review offers an approach to the selection of individualized and rational therapies for patients with metastatic breast cancer.
In order to frame this commentary on Higgins and Wolff’s review of current treatment options for metastatic breast cancer, I started with a PubMed search of Dr. Marty Abeloff’s work from more than 3 decades ago. This was partly motivated by my own curiosity about a leader whose early career was largely unknown to me, and partly by the desire to see whether “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”
Women in the Northeast US are more likely to receive breast-conservation therapy, while those in the South are more often recommended for mastectomies for the treatment of invasive breast cancer, according to a study presented at the 9th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBS), held April 30 to May 4 in New York.
A novel intraoperative breast cancer probe is showing significant promise in the reduction of repeat procedures in patients undergoing breast-conserving surgeries, according to a study presented at the ASBS meeting.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women living in the developed world. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime. The majority of newly diagnosed patients have early-stage disease.
The treatment of microscopic metastatic breast cancer with adjuvant systemic therapy has undergone significant changes in recent years. At the same time, our understanding of the biology of breast cancer has also improved, predominantly as a consequence of data obtained from cDNA microarrays.
Several large, prospective trials have evaluated tamoxifen compared with placebo for breast cancer risk reduction in women at increased risk for breast cancer. Analysis of the large, prospective breast cancer risk-reduction trials that used tamoxifen estimated that tamoxifen decreased breast cancer incidence by 38% on average and estrogen receptor–positive tumors by 48%.
Victor Vogel’s excellent review of the clinical basis for preventing breast cancer in high-risk women demonstrates the significant advances that have been made through the clinical trials mechanism. However, it is the progress in deciphering the link between hormones and the development and growth of breast cancer that is the true success story in this setting.
Choline, an essential nutrient found in foods such as eggs, is associated with a 24% reduced risk of breast cancer, according to a study supported by a grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), to be published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal's print issue in June.This study adds to the growing body of evidence that links egg consumption to a decreased risk of breast cancer.
CPM may be a rational choice for patients with known BRCA mutations, patients who have received therapeutic chest radiation, and some mastectomy patients.
This article reviews recent findings from clinical trials of epothilones and discusses future directions for the use of these agents in cancer therapy, with a focus on the two most-studied epothilones to date: ixabepilone and patupilone.
