New Treatment Strategies Provide More Options for Patients With Breast Cancer

Abstract

CHICAGO—Recently completed clinical trials indicate that new treatment strategies may control disease and improve survival for patients with breast cancer, in some cases in advanced disease. The findings, presented here at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in June, suggest that patients with breast cancer will soon have more options for treating the disease. “We have a multitude of therapies for women with breast cancer but continue to need new treatments that are more effective and have fewer side effects,” said Eric Winer, MD, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Breast Oncology Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both in Boston. In 2008, about 182 460 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed among women in the United States, according to estimates by the American Cancer Society. An additional 67 770 US women will be diagnosed in 2008 with the earliest, noninvasive form of breast cancer, carcinoma in situ. “Among women who have early stage breast cancer, our goal is to prevent recurrences and ultimately to prevent death from breast cancer while minimizing the side effects from treatment,” Winer said. “And in women with late-stage or metastatic breast cancer . . . our goal is to maintain quality of life, to control the disease, and to extend the period of time that a woman is alive with cancer.” Studies presented at the conference indicate that zoledronic acid can help prevent recurrence in early stage breast cancer, that adding bevacizumab to docetaxel slows disease progression in patients newly diagnosed as having locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer, and that the oral chemotherapy agent capecitabine is not an acceptable replacement for standard adjuvant chemotherapy in older women.