Breast Cancer

EAST HANOVER, NJ-If you are a breast cancer patient with bone pain, don’t ignore it; see your doctor. That is the primary message behind an educational campaign Novartis Oncology is launching directly to patients. The campaign encourages women to pay attention to persistent bone pain if they have or have had breast cancer, and to notify their doctor about it. A critical component of the campaign is to help women understand that there are treatment options for metastatic bone pain.

SILVER SPRING, Md-The Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) unanimously recommended that the FDA approve Taxol (paclitaxel for injection, Bristol-Myers Squibb) for use in the adjuvant treatment of node-positive breast cancer administered sequentially to standard doxorubicin-based combination therapy.

For many women under 40 years of age with breast cancer, surgery to remove the cancerous lump and accompanying radiation therapy seem to be the best option for eradicating the disease and preserving the natural breast. However, for women who carry a damaged version of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, thus predisposing them to breast cancer, such treatment may be insufficient. Researchers at Jefferson Medical College have found that these women are at greater risk years later of either relapsing or developing new tumors than are similarly treated women who do not carry one of these genes.

TOWSON, Maryland-“Mammography is still the gold standard for the screening and diagnosis of breast cancer, but that doesn’t mean it is always done right,” said Gilda Cardenosa, MD, head of breast imaging at the Cleveland Clinic. “There is a lot of bad mammography out there, even with all the regulations that are in place.”

The editor of Breast Cancer is Daniel F. Roses, MD, a professor of surgery at New York University and director of the Comprehensive Breast Cancer Center at that institution. Its contributors include Pat Borgen, MD, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Armando Giuliano, MD, from the University of California, Alison Estabrook, MD, from St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital, Frea Schnabel, MD, from Columbia-Presbyterian, David Page, MD, from Vanderbilt University, Larry Norton, MD, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and John Neiderhuber, MD, from the University of Wisconsin Medical Center. All of these notable individuals have made significant contributions to the management of patients with breast cancer.

WASHINGTON-The 18 members of the Board of Sponsors of the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM) campaign today challenged American employers to strengthen employee health care benefits and support for working women coping with breast cancer as well as those who seek information about prevention, early detection, treatment, and research.

ATLANTA-Results of three studies on the use of adjuvant endocrine therapy in premenopausal breast cancer patients suggest several “take-home messages,” I. Craig Henderson, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, said at the 35th annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). In his discussion of the three papers at a session on local-regional treatment of breast cancer, he noted the following.

Nathaniel I. Berlin, MD, is currently Professor Emeritus at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. He is the former director of the NCI’s Division of Cancer Biology and Diagnosis as well as the former chairman of the NCI’s Breast Cancer Task Force. He is also the former director and Professor Emeritus of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Northwestern University, Chicago.

BUFFALO, NY-Prostate cancer screening protocols and treatment for localized prostate cancer are less standardized than for other cancers such as breast cancer, and treatment choices remain difficult for many men and their physicians, Jerome P. Richie, MD, said at the Surgical Oncology Symposium, hosted by Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden-Premenopausal breast cancer patients who received 2 years of treatment with the LHRH analogue goserelin (Zoladex) showed significantly improved event-free survival, reduction of contralateral breast cancers, and a trend toward improved overall survival, Lars Rutqvist, MD, of the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, reported at the 35th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Atlanta.

ATLANTA-In an attempt to find ways to improve the prognosis for breast cancer in very young women, the International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG) looked back at outcomes in 3,700 premenopausal and perimenopau-sal patients who had been treated in four randomized controlled trials between 1978 and 1993. Results of that analysis were presented at a poster session at the 35th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

A new decision-making model developed by Dr.Giovanni Parmigiani and colleagues at Duke University has shown that the routine use of axillary lymph node dissection may not be necessary for many breast cancer patients. Recently, the use of

ATLANTA-“Herceptin combined with interleukin 2 (IL-2) is an active, well-tolerated regimen that has produced a clinical response in 4 of 25 breast cancer patients,” said Gini Fleming, MD, assistant professor of clinical medicine, Hematology/Oncology Section, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.

SAN DIEGO-In preclinical studies, Ligand Pharmaceuticals’ Targretin (LGD1069, also known as bexarotene) plus tamoxifen (Nolvadex) produced a response rate of 94% in tamoxifen-resistant breast tumors, compared with 33% for long-term tamoxifen therapy alone, said Ligand scientist Eric Bischoff.

Symptoms related to estrogen deficiency are among the most common complaints that postmenopausal breast cancer patients bring to the attention of oncologists. Menopause develops in these patients either naturally or prematurely as a result of cancer chemotherapy and/or endocrine therapy.

BALTIMORE-In a study of 1,504 premenopausal women with node-positive, receptor-positive breast cancer, the combination of tamoxifen (Nolvadex), goserelin (Zoladex), and CAF chemotherapy reduced the relative risk of breast cancer recurrence by 26%, compared with CAF alone.

Paclitaxel (Taxol) provides a nearly 40% improvement in survival with good quality of life in patients with metastatic breast cancer, according to a landmark study led by James F. Bishop, MD, director of the Sydney Cancer Centre and Professor of

WASHINGTON-A US federal court has granted a preliminary injunction barring Eli Lilly and Company and its sales representatives from promoting its drug Evista (raloxifene ) as effective in reducing the risk of breast cancer.

NEW YORK-The first clinical trials of a live genetically engineered Salmonella typhimurium bacterium are expected to get underway in the second half of this year in patients with cutaneous metastases of melanoma and breast cancer.

ATLANTA-In a meta-analysis of four trials of premenopausal women with advanced breast cancer, the combination of an LHRH-agonist (LHRH-A) and tamoxifen (Nolvadex) was clearly more effective than an LHRH-A alone, according to a presentation at the 35th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The long-term, worldwide trend of rising breast cancer mortality has apparently been reversed in several countries, with significant declines reported in the 1990s in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. These are the findings of a study

NEW ORLEANS-Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the breast is more accurate than conventional methods for identifying the extent of invasive lobular carcinoma, according to a study presented at the American Roentgen Ray Society annual meeting.

PHILADELPHIA-“Breast cancer is the most frequent misdiagnosis leading to professional liability litigation, and the most common breast cancer malpractice lawsuit is for misdiagnosis,” Kenneth Kern, MD, said at a 47th Annual Clinical Meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Furthermore, failing to detect breast cancer is among the top three law-suit-causing diagnostic errors made by internists, radiologists, general surgeons, OB-GYNs, and family practitioners, said Dr. Kern, of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Kern derived these conclusions from several databases, including the NCI’s SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology and End-Results) Program, the Physician Insurers Association of America Data Sharing Reports, and the US Civil Litigation survey.

Research conducted at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, suggests that the most serious and costly side effects of high-dose chemotherapy for breast cancer, including long-term hospitalization and severe inflammation of the

Despite a recent decline in incidence and mortality, breast cancer currently develops in one of eight North American women who live to 85 years of age, and remains the major cause of death in American women between the ages of 15 and 54.[1,2]

ATLANTA-Compared with other accepted medical interventions, breast cancer prevention with tamoxifen (Nolvadex) therapy is cost-effective, according to a poster presented at the ASCO annual meeting

Regular mammography screening combined with timely and appropriate treatment can reduce mortality from breast cancer by 30% in women ages 50 to 69 years and by 16% in women ages 40 to 49 years. A physician’s recommendation has

SILVER SPRING, Md-The Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) has recommended that the FDA approve Ellence (epirubicin hydrochloride for injection, Pharmacia & Upjohn) for use as a component of adjuvant therapy in patients with evidence of axillary node tumor involvement following resection of primary breast cancer (stage II and III).

I would like to comment about Dr. Vicente Valero’s response to Dr. Padmini Iyer’s question regarding adjuvant therapy for a postmenopausal woman with stage IIIA breast cancer. Although Dr. Valero’s response was quite detailed with regard to chemotherapy, no mention was made about the role of radiation therapy in patients with advanced breast cancer.

The Cord Blood Registry, in collaboration with the Cord Blood Donor Foundation, is participating in a Breast Cancer Study at Stanford University School of Medicine. The study, funded by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, will