High Points of 2011: An Interview
Posted 1/26/2012
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This is an interview from Oncology Stat with Dr. Clifford Hudis from Memorial Sloan Kettering re his views of the most important progress in 2011. I give you an excerpt and a link:OncologySTAT:
In your view which development in 2011 in breast cancer research could have the most significant impact on oncology?
Dr. Hudis: There were several important developments this year related to different aspects of breast cancer. I think that the
demonstration that an aromatase inhibitor, as expected, can be effective primary prevention for women without the disease is
important. Now we have three studies that have clearly shown a chemoprevention effect for systemic hormone therapy in patients.
This bodes very well for the general population who are worried about breast cancer.
I think the refinement in breast surgery that the ACOSOG study has supported is also critically important. The fact that can we can
continue to diminish the impact of surgical therapy on patients without compromising their cure is a very big deal-again, with broad
impact potentially on the several hundred thousand people per year with breast cancer.
The third development is in the area of systemic therapy, where we had several important breakthroughs this year with novel
targeted therapies, which are both important in the studies where they have been proven, but also have implications far more broadly. The effectiveness of an mTOR inhibitor in the BOLERO-2 trial suggests that this mode of therapy may have broad applicability across many settings of breast cancer. I think that the report at the end of 2011 of the activity of pertuzumab in the CLEOPATRA trial obviously has great promise to further improve the rates of cure for people with early-stage breast cancer. The adjuvant studies for that are already under way.
http://tinyurl.com/6u2qawa
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