Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. In this post, I will discuss our most recent understanding of this aggressive disease.
almost all women with IBC have lymph node involvement at the time of diagnosis.
Tag: Her2
HER2-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer
HER2, or human epidermal growth factor 2, is a special protein (receptor) on the surface breast cancer cells, and it controls the growth of the cancer cells. The HER2 protein is present as a result of overexpression or amplification of the oncogene ERBB2. A tumor is considered HER2 positive by either the presence of HER2 protein presence and/or the overexpression of HER2 gene (the ERBB2). HER2 positive tumors are considered aggressive and have a tendency to recur, however, there are newer medications targeting HER2-positive cancer and led to significant improvement in outcome. 15% to 20% of all invasive breast cancer is reported to be HER2 positive. In this post, I will discuss the treatment of metastatic HER2 positive disease only, the nonmetastatic disease will be presented at a later date.
her2 testing must be done on biopsy material of metastatic site in all patients.
Extended Therapy with Neratinib for HER2 Positive Breast Cancer
Neratinib is now approved for use in HER2 positive patients who completed their Trastuzumab-based therapy. This came following the publication of a phase 3 trial with the result indicating the benefit of Neratinib as compared to placebo. In the following blog post I will discuss the result of the ExteNET trial.
Continue reading “Extended Therapy with Neratinib for HER2 Positive Breast Cancer”
Breast Cancer Neoadjuvant Therapy Part 1/3
Introduction
Neoadjuvant therapy refers to the systemic treatment of breast cancer before definitive surgery, it is also called preoperative therapy. Neoadjuvant therapy was initially used for patients with the advanced inoperable disease, however, it is now proved to be beneficial in different subsets of patients including those with early-stage operable breast cancer.
Continue reading “Breast Cancer Neoadjuvant Therapy Part 1/3”