What are the standard and new treatments of breast cancer?

Breast cancer is the commonest cancer in women worldwide & developed countries with a small proportion of the world population accounting for almost 50% of breast cancers diagnosed worldwide.

For women with stage IV breast cancer, systemic therapies are effective. Some of them are hormone therapy, chemotherapy & targeted drugs. Firstly systemic treatments continue till cancer starts growing again or until side effects become unacceptable. Here are some of the high priority of breast cancer treatments are discussed.

Hormone Therapy:

The first systemic therapy is hormone therapy wherein the breast is affected by hormones like estrogen & progesterone. The breast cancer cells have receptors that attach to estrogen & progesterone, which help them grow. Hormone or endocrine therapy are treatments that stop hormones from attaching to these receptors. Hormone therapy reaches cancer cells in the body & is good for women with tumors that are hormone receptor-positive. It’s used after surgery to prevent recurrence.

Chemotherapy:

Now we move onto chemotherapy for breast cancer, here anti-cancer drugs are given intravenously or orally. It travels through the bloodstream to reach cancer cells in the body. It’s given directly into the spinal fluid which surrounds the brain & spinal cord. So when is chemotherapy treatment used? It’s used after surgery wherein adjuvant chemo is given to perish cancer cells that have been left behind or have spread out & are invisible on imaging tests. Next is before surgery, wherein neoadjuvant chemo shrinks the tumor & is removed. It treats cancers that are too big to be removed and doctors can see how cancer responds to it. It lowers the risk of breast cancer coming back & incase tumor cells are still found at the time of surgery, another dose is given to reduce recurrence. The drugs used are adjuvant and neoadjuvant, anthracyclines like doxorubicin & epirubicin plus taxanes like paclitaxel & docetaxel, 5-fluorouracil, cyclophosphamide.

Targeted Drugs:

Next, we onto Fulvestrant which is a drug that blocks & damages estrogen receptors. This drug acts as an anti-estrogen & is known as a selective estrogen receptor degrader & is used in post-menopausal women. It treats advanced breast cancer that’s not possible with other hormone therapies, to deal with 

advanced breast cancer treatment 

after other hormone drugs have stopped working, in combination with a CDK 4/6 inhibitor or PI3K inhibitor to treat metastatic breast cancer.