Outsmarting Breast Cancer
Reported September 09, 2008
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — Women with the type of breast cancer that depends on estrogen to grow are generally treated with drugs to lower the amount of estrogen in their bodies.
Unfortunately, breast tumors eventually figure out how to get around the lack estrogen and begin growing again. Now investigators from Georgetown University believe theyve found a drug that can outsmart the tumors by re-sensitizing them to the anti-hormonal drugs.
Their study was conducted among 27 patients with hormone-receptor positive breast cancer that had become resistant to the standard anti-hormonal drug anastrozole, a aromatase inhibitor. Researchers added another drug, called sorafenib, to their treatment to see if it might combine with anastrozole to have a positive effect. About a quarter of the women did see some benefit.
Given what we know about the ineffectiveness of sorafenib alone in metastatic breast cancer, we believe the benefit that were seeing may be attributable to the restoration of sensitivity to aromatase inhibitors, study author Claudine Isaacs, M.D., was quoted as saying. To manage breast cancer long term, its apparent that we may need to continually switch drugs to keep up with how a cancer evolves and evades each approach. In a sense, for each step back, we hope to take two steps forward.
SOURCE: Presented at the 2008 ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium, September 5, 2008