Data presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium show that basically all women with HER2+ breast cancers benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy/Herceptin due to their worse prognosis. In my mind, however, there is no more controversial area in breast cancer than in which patients truly benefit from receiving adjuvant chemotherapy, among women... Read more
After much debate at breast tumor boards throughout the world on the importance of HER2 and topoisomerase II (an enzyme involved in DNA replication) in predicting response to Anthracyclines, it seems that an extra copy of chromosome 17 in the cancer may be predictive. Things change pretty quickly.
We typically don't analyze chromosome 17... Read more
We have previously discussed this question about timing from breast surgery to chemotherapy, with the pat answer that around 2 months or less is safest, and after three months one starts to lose some of the benefit of chemotherapy in terms of increasing cure rate.
A similar question can be asked about radiation therapy for women who have had a... Read more
Discussed in this blog two years ago, many academicians now recommend testing for CYP2D6 metabolic signature to determine if postmenopausal women should switch from tamoxifen to aromatase inhibitors. However, given that most oncologists offer aromatase inhibitors preferentially to postmenopausal women over tamoxifen the question is still... Read more
From the San Antonio Breast Conference in December, new data shows a higher than predicted rate of breast cancer recurrence even with very small breast cancers that are HER2 positive. The data is from the first large study to analyze early-stage breast cancer patients with HER2 positive tumors one centimeter or smaller. All these women would... Read more
