(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 they’ve 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 we’re 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, it’s
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
