title: Anticancer therapy for breast cancer patients with skin metastases refractory to conventional treatments.
abstract: Skin metastases of breast cancer are usually late events in the course of tumor progression and signify a poor prognosis. They may remain as a therapeutic challenge especially after failure of standard treatments. Topical interventions, together with or without radiotherapy, may only palliate the symptoms temporarily. However, there may be alternative treatment modalities for unresectable breast cancer skin metastases resistant to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. There are various genetic alterations in tumors and therapeutic potential of expression patterns for factors like epidermal growth factor receptor may have important clinical implications in case of disease refractory to the conventional treatments. Here, we clarified the therapeutic options and genetic alterations in skin metastatic breast cancer patients refractory to standard chemotherapeutics.
authors.affiliation: Medical Oncology Clinic, Izmir Katip Celebi University Ataturk Training and Research Hospital, Izmir, Turkey E-mail : varolumut@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Umut
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Varol
authors.forename: Ibrahim
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Yildiz
authors.forename: Ahmet
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alacacioglu
authors.forename: Ruchan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Uslu
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000401:mortality; D019008:Drug Resistance, Neoplasm; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors / Q000378:metabolism; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000401:mortality / Q000556:secondary; D042643:Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor D / Q000096:biosynthesis
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases; D042643:Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor D; C508053:ERBB2 protein, human