New therapy gives hope to patients with advanced breast cancer

A new treatment which combines the immunotherapy Chemotherapy gives more hope of survival to women with metastatic bad cancer with negative triple mutations and positive HER2, said Thursday, June 6, 2019 an expert.

"This treatment, which has already been successfully tested in patients with lung cancer, is extremely new as it helps the Immune system recognize the malignant cells and destroy them, "explained Mexican doctor Brizio Moreno, attached to the ISSSTE Regional Hospital in León, in the state of Guanajuato.

The specialist explained that in Latin America, bad cancer is the most common cancer among the women and it's the second in mortality. In Mexico, he said, 65 women are diagnosed with bad cancer each day and only 30% of patients have this diagnosis at an early stage.

Although 58% of diagnosed cases are present you die fat that can spread to other parts of the body, which is known as metastasis. "In this metastatic setting, patients have a Incurable diseaseThe idea is not to increase toxicity or improve their quality of life, "he said.

Breast cancer, detailed to the extent that it is clbadified into three types: the hormone receptor positive (HR), when the tumor is sensitive to female hormones, receptor 2 (HER2) positive, in which there is overproduction of HER2 protein, and triple negative.

The latter is the most aggressive and the most difficult to treat, as there is no specific receiver to direct medication. Dr. Moreno explained that a study titled IMpbadion130 found that patients with triple-negative subtype cancer receiving immunobaday based on a substance called atezoliuzumab in combination with chemotherapy They could increase their life expectancy by almost 30%.
"Thanks to this, it has been shown that patients can live longer and better," said the specialist.

This one therapy, he says, stops the progression and increases survival.
While for patients with bad cancer HER2-positive metastatic did not receive prior treatment for metastatic disease, combined treatment of immunotherapy with another substance called trastuzumab with chemotherapy, also showed better levels of the survival.

"In the case of these patients, survival can reach eight years," he said. He explained that these treatments they constitute an important hope, especially for patients with triple-negative bad cancer, for which it has existed until now no treatment.

"We did not have many therapies to offer, so this is a significant advance in understanding this disease"The results of these studies were presented at the meeting of the American Association of Clinical Oncology, which was held last week in Chicago.

According to figures from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), every year in Latin America, more than 462,000 women are diagnosed with bad cancer and nearly 100,000 die. disease.

If the current trend continues, by 2030, the number of women diagnosed with bad cancer is expected to increase by 34% in the region.