Strategies and Progress of Endocrine Therapy for Patients with Metastatic Breast Cancer

Ribociclib in Breast Cancer Brain Metastases: A Case Report

Introduction

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. It frequently metastasizes to the lung, liver, and bones. Due to the improvement of therapeutic strategies and therefore longer patient survival, brain metastases have become more frequent. However, evidence-based therapeutic options of systemic treatment are limited because patients with breast cancer brain metastases are often excluded from clinical trials.

Case Presentation

Here, we show a patient with brain and orbital metastases from a hormone receptor-positive, Her2neu-negative breast cancer that led to one-sided blindness. She was treated with a combination therapy of the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib and the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole and showed a fast and durable response for 9 months with good tolerability of the treatment.

Conclusion

Systemic treatment with a CDK4/6 inhibitor and endocrine therapy can be considered in breast cancer brain metastases.

Towards Circulating-Tumor DNA-Based Precision Medicine

In the era of precision medicine, targeted therapies have been implemented for various diseases. Genomic information guides decision-making in cancer treatment. The improvements in next-generation sequencing and polymerase chain reaction have made it possible to access the genetic information using circulating-tumor DNAs (ctDNAs). Molecular characteristics of individual tumors can be obtained by analysis of ctDNAs, thus making them excellent tools to guide decision-making during treatment. In oncology, the use of ctDNAs in clinical practice is now gaining importance. Molecular analysis of ctDNAs has potential for multiple clinical applications, including early diagnosis, prognosis of disease, prognostic and/or predictive biomarkers, and monitoring response to therapy and clonal evolution. In this paper, we highlight the applications of ctDNAs in cancer management, especially in metastatic setting, and summarize recent studies about the use of ctDNAs as predictive biomarkers for the therapeutic adaptation/response in lung cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal cancer. These studies offer the evidence to use ctDNAs as a promising approach to solve unmet clinical needs.

Circulating HER-2 mRNA in the peripheral blood as a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in females with breast cancer

Breast cancer is a prevalent malignant cancer worldwide, and a lack of defined biomarkers for early prognostication contributes to its high associated mortality rate, especially in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2)-positive breast cancer. In the present study, HER-2 mRNA levels in patients were detected prior to surgery and during neoadjuvant chemotherapy to explore its potential diagnostic and prognostic value. Blood samples were collected from 70 patients with breast cancer, including 50 HER-2-negative and 20 HER-2-positive patients, prior to and following surgery (postoperative, n=13; neoadjuvant chemotherapy, n=5); the control group included 35 samples from healthy individuals. The relative mRNA level of HER-2 in blood was determined by one-step reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction. HER-2 expression curves of measurements taken during neoadjuvant chemotherapy were compared with the tumor size. A significant difference in the blood HER-2 mRNA level was observed between healthy women and patients with breast cancer (P<0.0001). A cutoff value of 1.512 was established for the circulating HER-2 level in healthy subjects based on the upper 95% confidence interval value of samples from the control group. The level of HER-2 mRNA in blood was associated with the HER-2 status, Ki-67 expression, and lymphovascular invasion in primary tumor tissue samples; however, there was no association with the lymph node status, tumor stage, tumor grade, tumor size, patient age, estrogen or progesterone receptor status of the primary tumor. HER-2 mRNA levels were associated with the response rate, as determined by primary tumor size, in patients who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy. In conclusion, baseline and early changes in peripheral blood HER-2 mRNA indicated that HER-2 mRNA may be a potential diagnostic biomarker for breast cancer and a prognostic marker for predicting the efficacy of neoadjuvant therapy.