Treatment of metastatic breast cancer

Abstract

Many newer agents in combination are being studied in the front-line treatment of women with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC), but the story in the endocrine arena is more about the wise use of new strategies to overcome endocrine resistance, because no new antihormonal agents have been approved in the past decade. During his presentation at the NCCN 19th Annual Conference, Dr. William Gradishar explored what's new in the treatment of MBC, focusing primarily on enhancing the effect of endocrine therapy to overcome resistance with newer targeted agents such as everolimus, reevaluating the role of rebiopsy on disease progression and measuring circulating tumor cells as a surrogate of response to treatment, and reviewing the effective treatment regimens for HER2-positive disease.