Neoadjuvant chemotherapy for operable breast cancer

Abstract

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is an established treatment option for early breast cancer.

Impact of treatment characteristics on response of different breast cancer phenotypes: pooled analysis of the German neo-adjuvant chemotherapy trials

“…The final, but most important limitation of this analysis is the use of pCR (the primary endpoint of all 7 trials) as a surrogate outcome. Even though pCR was found to be associated with prognosis [5,6,7], the associations with pCR observed in this analysis may not necessarily translate into associations of treatment characteristics with recurrence-free or overall survival.…”

“…Previous analyses of neoadjuvant trials compared neoadjuvant to adjuvant chemotherapy [6,7] or taxanecontaining versus non-taxane containing neoadjuvant treatments [20] and were based on aggregate level data only. Two recent pooled analyses explored the interaction between treatment and HER2 status.…”

“…Neoadjuvant regimens are considered equivalent to adjuvant regimens with identical dosing schemes [5,6,7].…”

The effects of adding zoledronic acid to neoadjuvant chemotherapy on tumour response: exploratory evidence for direct anti-tumour activity in breast cancer

“…The conventional end point of neoadjuvant CT studies in breast cancer is pathological complete response (pCR), representing the most robust surrogate marker of longer-term outcome (Fisher et al, 1997(Fisher et al, , 1998van der Hage et al, 2001;Heys et al, 2002;Bear et al, 2006;Mieog et al, 2007). However, the definition of this has not been applied in a consistent and standardised manner throughout clinical trials (Kuroi et al, 2005).…”

Serial MRI scans help in assessing early response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy and tailoring breast cancer treatment

“…The use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy(NAC) in breast cancer is becoming increasingly prevalent aiming to achieve tumour down-staging to facilitate breast-conserving surgery in patients who would otherwise have been candidates for mastectomy. There is convincing evidence that NAC results in similar overall survival rates to adjuvant chemotherapy [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Furthermore, NAC provides opportunities to assess invivo chemosensitivity by monitoring tumour response.…”