Breast Cancer

San Antonio, TX—The uptake of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs for risk reduction of breast cancer is still poor, as was confirmed by a study using the electronic health records (EHRs) from Geisinger Health System in Danville, PA.

San Antonio, TX—Molecular subtyping of early breast cancers using Mamma­Print and BluePrint assays allows the precise and accurate prediction of the molecular phenotype of the disease, which has the potential to guide the selection of personalized therapy if the tests are used prospectively.

San Antonio, TX—For the treatment of estrogen receptor (ER)-positive early breast cancer, 10 years of treatment with tamoxifen yields better outcomes than 5 years of treatment, according to an analysis from the international ATLAS study that was presented at the 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

San Antonio, TX—The addition of an oral investigational agent to letrozole (Femara) for the treatment of estrogen receptor (ER)-positive metastatic breast cancer more than tripled the time spent in remission compared with endocrine therapy alone, according to a study reported at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Vancouver, BC—In the aftermath of the Z0011 study from the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group, oncology centers across the United States are reexamining their approach to axillary management in breast cancer.

Vienna, Austria—Despite a robust response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, which renders many early breast cancer tumors resectable, breast-conserving surgery is often overlooked in favor of mastectomy, according to an analysis of the Neo-ALLTO clinical trial, which was presented at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress.

San Antonio, TX—Black women with clinically node-negative invasive breast cancer were less likely than white women to undergo sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) for axillary staging and also were more likely to develop lymphedema, according to a study presented at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

San Antonio, TX—In a retrospective utilization and cost analysis, nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) therapy was associated with substantially lower total use of prophylactic colony-stimulating factor (CSF) than docetaxel (Taxotere) and paclitaxel (Taxol) in the treatment of breast cancer.

San Antonio, TX—Assessing all eligible patients with breast cancer for recurrence risk with the 21-gene Oncotype DX assay at diagnosis could save $330.8 million annually by avoiding ineffective chemotherapy, according to data presented at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Grapevine, TX—A New Jersey research team is making the case for relying less on the Oncotype DX test for breast-cancer prognosis and instead focusing on conventional pathological analyses.