Publications by authors named "Tanja Ovcaricek"

(1) Background: Abemaciclib combined with endocrine therapy is a standard first- or later-line of treatment for HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer (MBC). The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to describe the outcomes of patients treated in a real-world setting, with particular focus on elderly patients. (2) Patients and methods: Patients treated with abemaciclib between November 2019 and February 2022 were included in the study.

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Liquid biopsy is becoming an important source of new biomarkers during the treatment of metastatic cancer patients. Using size-based microfluid technology, we isolated circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from metastatic breast cancer patients to evaluate their presence and cluster formation, as well as the presence of megakaryocytes and immune-inflammatory blood cells, and to correlate their presence with clinicopathological data and overall survival (OS). In total, 59 patients (median age 60.

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Background: Pregnancy associated breast cancer is a rare disease. It presents a unique entity of breast cancer with aggressive phenotype. The main aim was to evaluate how the international guidelines were followed in daily practice.

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Background: Selective cyclin-dependent kinases 4/6 inhibitors (CDKi) have become the standard of care in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer (ABC). We performed retrospective analysis in patients treated with CDKi in the first year of their routine clinical use in Slovenia.

Methods: The primary goals were time-to-treatment failure (TTF) and overall survival (OS), analysed via Kaplan-Meier method, the secondary goals were clinical benefit rate (CBR) and safety.

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Background The standard treatment of hormone receptor positive, HER2 negative early breast cancer (BC) is surgery followed by adjuvant systemic therapy either with endocrine therapy alone or with the addition of chemotherapy followed by endocrine therapy. Adjuvant systemic therapy reduces the risk of recurrence and death from BC. Whether an individual patient will benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy is an important clinical decision.

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Article Synopsis
  • Activating mutations in the EGFR gene make patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) more responsive to tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), highlighting the importance of mutation screening in treatment.
  • A study reviewed 40 patients treated with TKIs, finding a 45% prevalence of EGFR mutations, with deletion mutations in exon 19 being the most common.
  • Patients with EGFR mutations experienced significantly longer progression-free survival (22.0 months vs. 3.2 months) from TKI therapy, suggesting that identifying these mutations can enhance treatment outcomes in NSCLC.
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The standard palliative treatment for advanced stage NSCLC remains a platinum doublet but by tailoring chemotherapy according to tumour histology the results can be improved through using pemetrexed-containing schemas in non-squamous-cell disease. In addition, maintenance chemotherapy appears to be effective in patients achieving clinical benefit by induction therapy. Targeted therapy based on the presence of activating epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) activating mutations or EML4-ALK gene rearrangement is becoming standard practice with high median survival rates, up to 30 months.

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Introduction: The excision repair cross-complementing 1 (ERCC1) protein is an extensively investigated molecular marker because it may decrease sensitivity to platinum-based chemotherapy. Low ERCC1 expression has already been correlated with better treatment efficacy in non-small-cell lung cancer patients treated with platinum-based chemotherapy. However, the data on a prognostic and/or predictive value of ERCC1 in small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) are still very limited.

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Background: Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is defined by a lack of expression of both estrogen (ER) and progesteron (PgR) receptors as well as human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). Our retrospective analysis addressed prognostic factors for short- and long-term outcomes of patients (pts) with TNBC pts treated in routine clinical practice. PATIENT AND METHODS.

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