title: Personalizing therapy for metastatic breast cancer.
abstract: Treatments for metastatic breast cancer are increasingly tailored towards individual tumor biology. For tumors that overexpress HER2, progressing on trastuzumab and lapatinib, a range of active agents including pertuzumab, neratinib and trastuzumab-MCC-DM1, have demonstrated activity when combined with trastuzumab. In HER2-normal metastatic breast cancer, recent studies suggest that the addition of bevacizumab to first-line chemotherapy improves progression-free survival irrespective of choice of cytotoxic agent. Another interesting area of investigation is the inhibition of poly-ADP-ribose polymerase, an enzyme important for DNA repair. This strategy may be particularly effective in patients with inherited defects in DNA repair or by the co-administration of DNA damaging cytotoxic chemotherapy. This article covers key new areas of systemic therapy for MBC from the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2009 annual meeting.
authors.affiliation: Breast Cancer Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 1275 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021, USA. morrisp1@mskcc.org
authors.forename: Patrick G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Morris
authors.forename: Clifford A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Hudis
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000494:pharmacology / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology; D018572:Disease-Free Survival; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases; C508053:ERBB2 protein, human