A new treatment option that lengthens patients’ lives is now available to postmenopausal women with the most common type of metastatic breast cancer, according research published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study, conducted by the Southwest Oncology Group, involved women diagnosed with hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer, a subtype that accounts for more than half of all breast cancers. Researchers used a combination of the anti-estrogen drugs anastrozole and fulvestrant. The drugs, in combination, extended the median survival time of women with stage 4 hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer by more than 6 months compared with those who received standard treatment with anastrozole alone.
Lead study researcher Dr Rita Mehta, a UC Irvine oncologist, said the results of the phase 3 trial are particularly exciting because “these patients have not had a new treatment that gave them an overall survival benefit in more than a decade.”
Both drugs are currently used to treat breast cancer, although not in combination. Anastrozole (Arimidex) lowers the production of tumor-promoting estrogen, and fulvestrant (Faslodex) restricts the receptors that allow estrogen to signal cells to grow and reproduce. Fulvestrant also accelerates the degradation of these receptors.
“The next step would be to try the combination in even earlier stages of breast cancer to see whether long-term cures could be increased at those stages,” said Mehta, an associate clinical professor of medicine with the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and an oncologist with UC Irvine’s Breast Health Center.
Source: UC Irving.