New possibilities of targeted therapy for advanced hormone receptor-positive breast cancer Review article
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Abstract
Molecular studies have shown that breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease with different biological features and different prognosis. From clinical point of view breast cancer patients could be divided into three types with diverse sensitivity to therapy. In one of these groups hormone receptor positive breast cancers are sensitive to endocrine treatment. This therapy is the primary treatment of breast cancer patients and is also the oldest method of systemic treatment. Due to high efficacy and good toxicity profile is widely used. Unfortunately not all patients with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer have the same benefit. Many of them progress despite prior good response to such treatment. There are many reasons for that. One of them is the existing cross-talk between estrogen receptors and the other signaling pathways. Intracellular phosphoinositide 3-kinase pathway (PI3K/Akt/mTOR) is the major site of transmission and cross-talks associated with the activity of human epidermal growth factor receptors and other receptor tyrosine kinases. The PI3K pathway is frequently aberrantly activated in breast cancers. Everolimus is a drug that inhibits the proliferation signals by inhibiting mTOR kinase activity. This protein plays a key role in the regulation of cell division and blood vessel growth. The combination of endocrine therapy with inhibition of PI3K and mTOR improved treatment results, as it was shown in randomized phase III study. These results may set a new standard of care for women with advanced hormone receptorpositive breast cancer.
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Copyright: © Medical Education sp. z o.o. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
Address reprint requests to: Medical Education, Marcin Kuźma (marcin.kuzma@mededu.pl)
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