Adding targeted therapy to chemotherapy and surgery in patients with breast cancer

This study wanted to find out if adding targeted therapies to chemotherapy before surgery improved outcomes in patients with breast cancer. The study found that patients responded to treatment better when a targeted therapy was added to chemotherapy and surgery treatment.

There are multiple ways to treat breast cancer. Many breast cancers are treated with chemotherapy, then surgery to remove the tumor. Some types of breast cancer can be treated with targeted therapies. These targeted therapies kill the cancer cells without harming the healthy tissues. It is not known if adding treatment with targeted therapies to the more common chemotherapy treatment will improve outcomes in patients with breast cancer.

This study analyzed the results from 17 smaller studies. Five of these studies looked at adding trastuzumab (Herceptin) to chemotherapy treatment. Seven looked at adding bevacizumab (Avastin) to chemotherapy treatment. The other five looked at various other targeted therapies. All of the patients had breast cancer that had not spread. In all of these studies, some patients were treated with chemotherapy and surgery, and some had chemotherapy, surgery, and a targeted therapy.

Patients treated with trastuzumab were 2.2 times more likely to completely respond to treatment than patients who had chemotherapy only before surgery. Patients treated with bevacizumab were 1.23 times more likely to completely respond to treatment than patients who only had chemotherapy. Patients with HER2-negative breast cancer who were treated with bevacizumab had a 31% higher survival than patients with HER2-negative breast cancer who were only treated with chemotherapy.

The study concluded that adding a targeted therapy, especially trastuzumab or bevacizumab to chemotherapy before surgery resulted in better outcomes for patients with breast cancer.