Have You Been Diagnosed With Late-Stage Breast Cancer? Know That You Have Treatment Options.
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/ Updated October 3rd, 2024

Have You Been Diagnosed With Late-Stage Breast Cancer? Know That You Have Treatment Options.

Medical Source: Dr. Elizabeth Comen
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In the current environment, it is possible for women with late-stage breast cancer to do very well for long periods of time. There are so many options, both new and old, to treat metastatic breast cancer.

This section provides information about what those options are from targeted therapies to chemotherapy and when these various treatment options can be used. It also provides information on new, exciting research that is currently being tested in clinical trials and information about when recently approved drugs, like immunotherapies, can be used. While there have been many developments in recent years when it comes to treating late-stage breast cancer, which therapies can be used will depend on the characteristics of the patient's cancer.

New Developments for Advanced Breast Cancer

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For women with HER2-positive breast cancer, meaning they have high levels of a protein called HER2 on the surface of their cancer cells, targeted treatments are available. The drugs trastuzumab (Herceptin) and pertuzumab (Perjeta) have transformed the outlook for some women with late-stage breast cancers. These therapies, which are often combined with chemo, are very effective at controlling breast cancer once it has spread.

Another big advancement has come in the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. This has historically been one of the most aggressive and hardest to treat forms of the disease, because it lacks any of the main drivers of breast cancer the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor, and the HER2 receptor and it doesn't respond to treatments that target these receptors.

Now, in addition to chemotherapy, immunotherapy has been approved to treat triple-negative breast cancer. In studies, this new therapy has been shown to extend the lives of women with this type of cancer.

We know getting an advanced cancer diagnosis is scary, so we broke down the latest treatment options here on our later stage treatment page.

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

Dr. Elizabeth Comen serves as a medical advisor to SurvivorNet. She is a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Read More

Treating Late-Stage Breast Cancer

This series explains what to expect when you are given a late-stage breast cancer diagnosis. While there is no cure for metastatic breast cancer, there are still many treatment options and new approaches are being researched consistently.

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