{"id":14130,"date":"2015-01-12T10:55:19","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T16:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/?p=14130"},"modified":"2015-01-13T12:39:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T18:39:27","slug":"combined-therapy-reduces-chance-of-breast-cancer-recurrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/combined-therapy-reduces-chance-of-breast-cancer-recurrence\/","title":{"rendered":"Combined Therapy Reduces Chance of Breast Cancer Recurrence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cancerdemama\"<\/a>Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the United States in collaboration with other istitutions reported that in a recent phase 2 clinical trial, women with small (stage 1), HER2-positive breast tumors who received a combination of lower-intensity chemotherapy and a targeted drug following surgery were highly unlikely to have the cancer recur within three years of treatment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

According with the authors, the findings may help establish the therapy \u2013 which combines the chemotherapy<\/strong> agent paclitaxel and the targeted drug trastuzumab (Herceptin) \u2013 as the first standard treatment approach for this group of patients<\/p>\n

Many previous studies excluded women with small (less than 2 cm in diameter) HER2-positive breast tumors<\/strong> that had not spread to nearby lymph nodes from clinical trials of trastuzumab, because it wasn\u2019t considered prudent to expose them to an investigational drug, given the relatively low risk that the disease would recur<\/strong>. Without a single, standard treatment for this group of patients, treatment approaches have varied widely. Breast cancers are classified as HER2-positive if their cells have surplus human epidermal growth factor receptors<\/strong> on their surface, making them extra-sensitive to signals to grow and divide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen with small, HER-2 positive, node-negative [no sign of spread to adjacent lymph nodes] breast tumors have a low, but still significant, risk of recurrence of their disease,\u201d <\/em>said the study\u2019s senior author, Eric Winer, MD, director of the Breast Oncology Program at the Susan F. Smith Center for Women\u2019s Cancers at Dana-Farber. \u201cThis study demonstrates that a combination of lower-intensity chemotherapy and trastuzumab \u2013 which is associated with fewer side effects than traditional chemotherapy regimens \u2013 is an appealing standard of care for this group of patients.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The study enrolled 406 patients with HER2-positive<\/strong>, node-negative breast tumors smaller than 3 cm<\/strong>. They were treated with the drug combination for 12 weeks, followed by nine months of Herceptin alone. (Traditional drug regimens for women with HER2-positive breast cancer involve chemotherapy<\/strong> with adriamycin and cytoxan followed by paclitaxel and trastuzumab.)<\/p>\n

Three years after completing therapy, 98.7 percent of the participants were alive and free of invasive breast cancer. The side effects were generally milder than those associated with traditional chemotherapy regimens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re committed to identifying treatment regimens that are geared not only to the specific biological features of a woman\u2019s cancer, but also to the stage of the cancer \u2013 the size of the tumor and how far it has advanced,\u201d<\/em> said the study\u2019s lead author, Sara Tolaney, MD, MPH, of the Susan F. Smith Center for Women\u2019s Cancers at Dana-Farber \u201cThis study is a prime example of the value of that approach.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The findings were reported in New England Journal of Medicine <\/em>on January 7.<\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong> Dana-Farber Cancer Institute<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the United States in collaboration with other istitutions reported that in a recent phase 2 clinical trial, women with small (stage 1), HER2-positive breast tumors who received a combination of lower-intensity chemotherapy and a targeted drug following surgery were highly unlikely to have the cancer recur within three years …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-14130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualidad-en-la-salud","tag-casalud","cat-3-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14168,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14130\/revisions\/14168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}