New treatment strategies offer hope to women with bre...( fits that outweigh the side-effects or ...),Health

Dr Crown and his colleague Professor Robert Leonard have conducted an investigation known as the Anglo-Celtic I Study, in which more than 600 women with severe breast cancer involving the lymph nodes participated. They were randomly assigned to one of two different treatment groups, which for some patients included a short, sharp programme of high-dose chemotherapy. The analysis presented at the ESMO Congress is based on a follow-up over an average of five years and showed no significant differences in the survival or the rate of relapse. "In truth, the results of conventional-dose chemotherapy were better than expected," he said. "However, we must keep an open mind for the rest of the data, although our results already indicate that any benefits that emerge from high-dose chemotherapy will be, at best, modest."

Far from indicating a failure of the high-dose treatment regime, Dr Crown said, "I believe that these results show us how far we can go with chemotherapy." More promising are the data from Trastuzamab, the prototype for the new molecularly targeted drugs in combination with chemotherapy produce the best results. The long road of basic biological research is likely to yield substantial benefits in the treatment of patients with breast cancer. "It would seem that the post-chemotherapy phase of the war on cancer has just begun," Dr Crown concluded.

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Contact: Gracemarie Bricalli
gracemarie@esmo.org
0041-91-973-1911
European Society for Medical Oncology
21-Oct-2002