A first-of-its-kind, federally funded clinical trial has shown it's possible to identify breast cancer survivors who are at higher risk of their cancer coming back due to the presence of dormant cancer cells and to effectively treat these cells with repurposed, existing drugs. The research, led by scientists from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn's Perelman School of Medicine was published today in Nature Medicine.
While breast cancer survival continues to improve, thanks to advances in detection and treatment, when breast cancer relapses—or returns after initial treatment—it is still incurable. For the 30 percent of women and men who do relapse, the only option is continuous and indefinite treatment which cannot eliminate the cancer completely. Some breast cancers, like triple negative and HER2+, recur within a few years, and others like ER+ can recur decades later. Until now, there has not been a way to identify those breast cancer survivors who harbor the dormant cells that lead to recurrence in real time and to intervene with a treatment that can prevent incurable relapse.
In a randomized phase II clinical trial with 51 breast cancer survivors, existing drugs were able to clear dormant tumor cells from 80 percent of the study participants. The three-year survival rate without any disease recurrence was above 90 percent in patients who received one drug and 100 percent for patients who received both study drugs.
"The lingering fear of cancer returning is something that hangs over many breast cancer survivors after they celebrate the end of treatment," said principal investigator Angela DeMichele, MD, MSCE, FASCO, the Mariann T. and Robert J. MacDonald Professor in Breast Cancer Research.
