Long-term toxic effects of adjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor affecting women. Adjuvant systemic therapies have been shown to have a significant impact on reducing the risk for breast cancer recurrence and overall mortality. Chemotherapy remains an important and frequently used treatment option in the adjuvant setting, and the associated short-term adverse events are very well described.

EGFR, pMAPK, pAkt and PTEN status by immunohistochemistry: correlation with clinical outcome in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer patients treated with trastuzumab.

Background: In an attempt to identify markers of resistance to trastuzumab, we evaluated both the profiling of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive tumor cells measuring the relative levels of EGFR, pMAPK, pAkt and PTEN and their correlations with clinical outcome in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer patients treated with trastuzumab.

Patients And Methods: Tumor tissues for this retrospective analysis were available from 45 out of 76 patients with metastatic breast cancer treated from April 1999 to March 2006 with trastuzumab-based therapy at our Institution. Evaluations of EGFR, pMAPK, pAkt and PTEN status by immunohistochemistry (IHC) were carried out on all 45 tissue samples and their correlations with response to trastuzumab, incidence of central nervous system (CNS) metastases, time to progression (TTP), overall survival from diagnosis of breast cancer (OS1), from diagnosis of metastatic disease (OS2) and from the start of trastuzumab (OS3) were analyzed.

Aromatase inhibitors: a new reality for the adjuvant endocrine treatment of early-stage breast cancer in postmenopausal women.

Tamoxifen, a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM), has been used for many decades as the "gold standard" adjuvant treatment for patients with hormone-receptor-positive early breast cancer. This drug, when administered for 5 years, reduces the risk for recurrence, contralateral breast cancer (BC) and death. The optimal duration of tamoxifen in the adjuvant setting has not been established yet, but it has been demonstrated that 5 years are better than shorter treatment while it is still unclear if a prolongation of the treatment for more than 5 years is worthwhile.