Neoadjuvant therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer.

Neoadjuvant therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer. Rev Recent Clin Trials. 2017 Feb 02;: Authors: Wuerstlein R, Harbeck N Abstract In HER2-positive early breast cancer, neoadjuvant treatment with a combination of sequential chemotherapy and HER2-targeted therapy is currently the standard of care. This is followed by breast surgery, radiotherapy (if indicated), completion of 12 months of HER2-directed therapy, and -depending on the tumor biology - endocrine adjuvant therapy, and ultimately follow up. 10-year survival rates in the HER2-positive subgroup of breast cancer do reach now more than 75% with the introduction of first adjvuant and later neoadjuvant HER2-targeted therapies over the last 15 years. The neoadjvuant setting helps to downstage locally advanced tumors, to provide early information of tumor response, to assess the efficacy of new therapies in vivo, to reduce treatment duration, and to introducte new targeted therapies into the clinical routine. It also allows enrolling fewer patients into clinical trials in order to reach adequate effects in clinical outcome. The neoadjuvant approach and our interest in this setting is based on pCR (pathological complete response) and its translation into better long-term outcome. In recent trials, we have reached more than 60% pCR with a subsequent improvement of DFS and hopefully OS. Therefore, chemotherapy schedules and new HER2-targeted agents such as lapatinib, pertuzumab, and ...
Source: Reviews on Recent Clinical Trials - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: Rev Recent Clin Trials Source Type: research