Articles

Adjuvant chemotherapy should be recommended for patients with completely resected, isolated local or regional recurrence (ILRR) of breast cancer, and the argument is strongest for women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive tumor recurrences, according to the results of the international Chemotherapy as Adjuvant for Locally Recurrent Breast Cancer (CALOR) trial.

Two studies presented in San Antonio reached conflicting conclusions regarding the value of dose-dense chemotherapy in patients with early breast cancer.

Chemotherapy may not necessarily be the reason that patients with breast cancer often complain of “fuzzy thinking” and difficulty solving problems, according to research showing that cognitive changes are present in some patients at baseline, and may be related to fatigue and anxiety.

>The molecular make-up of triple- negative breast cancer is becoming better understood, and new evidence suggests that the main biologic pathways can be targeted with drugs, according to Justin Balko, PharmD, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Researcher, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville.

Patients classified as low risk by the EndoPredict panel had a significantly lower rate of distant metastasis after 5 and 10 years of follow-up compared with patients who did not meet the test’s criteria for low risk, according to Peter Dubsky, MD, of the Breast Health Center, Associate Professor of Sur­gery, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.

For the treatment of estrogen receptor (ER)-positive early breast cancer, 10 years of treatment with tamoxifen yields better outcomes than 5 years of treatment, according to an analysis from the international ATLAS study that was presented at the 2012 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

The honor of delivering the William I. McGuire Memorial Lecture at this year’s meeting went to Gabriel N. Hortobagyi, MD, FACP, Professor of Breast Medical Oncology and Nellie B. Connally Chair in Breast Cancer at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston.

San Francisco, CA—Gene-expression profiling (GEP) of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may help to personalize chemotherapy for patients with pancreatic cancer by predicting how patients will respond to certain treatments, according to a study reported at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

On December 14, 2012, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to ponatinib (Iclusig; ARIAD Pharmaceuticals) based on the results from a phase 2 clinical trial.

Boston, MA—Patients with ALK-positive non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) continued with crizotinib therapy more than twice as long when drug-resistant lesions were managed with local ablation, as shown by the results of a small clinical trial presented at the 2012 American Society for Radiation Oncology meeting.