http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/stories/person/1788 Stories and external links referencing a person (RSS) en http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/low-dose-chemotherapy-plus-antiangiogenesis-drug-has-activity-advanced-brea <!--paging_filter--><p>Chemotherapy given in low, frequent doses - a novel strategy called "metronomic" delivery - achieved partial shrinkage of disease in some advanced breast cancer patients when given concurrently with an angiogenesis inhibitor, report researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. <p>In a pilot study of 55 patients, the combination of low-dose chemotherapy and the anti-VEGF antibody, bevacizumab (Avastin; Genentech) delayed the breast cancer's progression by an average of 5 1/2 months, compared to two months with the low-dose chemotherapy alone, said Harold Burstein, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber. He presented the results Dec. 8, 2005 in a General Session at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. <p>"Pairing metronomic therapy with a dedicated angiogenesis inhibitor showed clinical activity, and was quite well tolerated," said Burstein. "We think this is a combination worth pursuing and are exploring this treatment concept further in a Phase II study, which extends these treatments into early stage breast cancer therapy." <p>The current study is one of the first rigorous tests of a treatment strategy that was proposed several years ago as a means of improving the results of chemotherapy for breast cancer, said Burstein, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.</p> Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:23:35 -0400 70652986 3727 at http://harvardscience.harvard.edu http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/herceptin-treatment-lowers-recurrence-rate-early-breast-cancer <!--paging_filter--><p>Encouraging findings came from an interim report from HERA, an ongoing large, international clinical trial of Herceptin, published Oct. 19, 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The analysis was led by Richard Gelber, PhD, of Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who led the statistical analysis for the HERA trial, which is one of the largest breast cancer trials to date. It includes more than 5,000 patients in 39 countries. <p>Women whose tumors were HER2-positive - that is, overexpressing a protein associated with more aggressive cancer and poorer outcomes - had approximately a 50 percent lower risk of disease recurrence. This translated into an 8 percent improvement in the number of women who were free of disease two years after beginning the treatment. <p>"This is probably the biggest evidence of a treatment effect I've ever seen in oncology," says Gelber. "It is quite remarkable."</p> Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:40:56 -0400 70652986 3550 at http://harvardscience.harvard.edu