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Chemotherapy Options for Metastatic Breast Cancer

Summary & Participants

Learning about all of the different treatment options for metastatic breast cancer can be daunting. Here is what you need to know about chemotherapy.

Medically Reviewed On: July 14, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer must deal with a serious disease, but they have many therapeutic options available to them.

HAROLD BURSTEIN, MD: Treatments for metastatic breast cancer are not designed to eradicate the tumor once and for all. We don't have that ability right now. On the other hand, the good news is that there are many drugs and many treatments that can actually help keep the tumor under control for a very long time. And increasingly, women with advanced breast cancer have both multiple treatment options, are benefitting from newer therapies, and are living longer and better with their disease.

We are increasingly treating the tumor based on the biology of the disease. So we always test all breast cancers to determine whether or not they are sensitive to certain kinds of drugs.

KIMBERLY BLACKWELL, MD: In tumors that are estrogen receptor positive or in very simple terms need the female hormone estrogen to grow, we will almost a 100 perecent of the time recommend some sort of tablet form of antihormonal therapy.

ANNOUNCER: Chemotherapy also has an important role in helping to control advanced cancer.

HAROLD BURSTEIN, MD: What almost all chemotherapy drugs share in common is that they target the DNA machinery of the cell, or they target the so-called microtubules, the small structural elements within the cancer cell that help maintain the normal shape and function of the cell.

ANNOUNCER: There are many different classes of chemotherapy drugs.

HAROLD BURSTEIN, MD: These include anthracyclines, drugs like doxorubicin and epirubicin; taxanes, that's paclitaxel and docetaxel and derivatives of paclitaxel; vinca alkaloids, drugs like vinorelbine; alkylator-type chemotherapy drugs, cyclophosphamide and carboplatin; drugs that are so-called antimetabolites, drugs like capecitabine or 5-FU or gemcitabine.

ANNOUNCER: Combinations of the drugs are sometimes given to patients. Hair loss, nausea, vomiting, allergic reactions, low blood counts, mouth sores and neuropathy, a tingling in the hands and feet are common chemotherapy side effects. Anti-nausea medicines and medicines to help regulate blood counts have improved the patient experience.

ERIC WINER, MD: Most of our large studies have demonstrated that giving single agents one after the other gives you ultimately as good a result as giving combinations and giving single-agent chemotherapy tends to be associated with fewer side effects.

ANNOUNCER: Doctors are finding newer and safer ways to give old chemotherapy drugs.

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