title: Recent advances in breast cancer: the 27th ESMO Congress 2002.
abstract: Breast cancer was the focus of several presentations during the 27th European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress held in Nice. Fulvestrant seems to be equally effective to tamoxifen as a first-line therapy in hormone-sensitive advanced breast cancer in postmenopausal women. However, it may be more effective than tamoxifen in ER- and PgR-positive disease. The addition of tamoxifen to epirubicin containing regimens was found to significantly increase PFS and OS in patients with MBC according to a multivariate analysis of 640 patients. BRCA-1 linked breast cancer was reported to be more sensitive to anthracycline-based CT than sporadic and BRCA-2 linked disease. VEGF was found to be an independent prognostic factor in patients with node-negative breast cancer. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Brunel Institute of Cancer Genetics, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK. kefahmokbel@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Kefah
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mokbel
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans