Understanding Your Advanced Breast Cancer Diagnosis
- When breast cancer is diagnosed at stage four, also known as metastatic, that means it has spread to distant parts of the body. While there is no cure, there are still many treatment options at this stage.
- The current options include hormone therapy, chemotherapy, and targeted drugs. Sometimes surgery and/or radiation is considered.
- In recent years, new treatment options have improved the outlook for stage four cancer a great deal and new approaches are constantly being studied.
- Treatment aims to keep you stable, slow tumor growth & improve quality of life.
With advanced disease, the goal of treatment is to keep you as stable as possible, slow the tumor growth, and improve your quality of life.
Read MoreNew developments for late-stage breast cancer
Targeted therapies
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. Dr. Elizabeth Comen breaks down treatment options for HER2-positive cancers.There has also been exciting new research into a new classification of breast cancer called HER2-“low” which means the tumors have lower levels of HER2, but do not meet the classic definition for HER2-positive tumors. This opens the door for new treatment options for the many women who fell into this category.
Immunotherapy
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.
CDK4/6 inhibitors
For postmenopausal women with hormone-receptor-positive and HER2-negative breast cancers, a newer class of drugs called CDK4/6 inhibitors are available. These drugs have been shown to improve survival in some women with metastatic cancer.
These CD4/CD6 drugs work to decrease the amount of estrogen that can be taken into a cancer cell, with the goal of slowing the rate at which that cancer cell can expand.
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