Advanced Breast Cancer Combination Therapy Shows Potential
With the addition of everolimus (Afinitor®) to exemestane, postmenopausal women whose advanced breast cancer no longer responded to hormonal therapy lived approximately 4 months longer without disease progression compared with women who received exemestane alone.
The median progression-free survival for women receiving the combination therapy was 7.4 months compared with 3.2 months for those who received exemestane alone, Gabriel Hortobagyi, MD, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, reported. These were the latest available data from the trial, called BOLERO-2, presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and published earlier online in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In July 2011, the randomized phase of BOLERO-2 was stopped prematurely after an interim analysis showed an improvement in progression-free survival. There are no data yet on whether the combination therapy improves overall survival, but researchers expect to have that information in late 2012.
“For postmenopausal patients with hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer, the addition of everolimus to exemestane markedly improves the duration of disease control,” Dr Hortobagyi said. However, the side effects associated with everolimus, such as fatigue and oral mucositis, should be weighed against the drug’s benefits, the study authors noted.
Source: NCI.
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