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Metronomic Chemotherapy in Breast Cancers

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Metronomic Chemotherapy

Abstract

Breast cancer is a common disease in women and its incidence is increasing. A proportion of breast cancer patients are metastatic at diagnosis or become metastatic during the follow-up period and need a personalized and/or target treatment approach. Metronomic chemotherapy can be regarded as a multi-targeted therapy for advanced disease, combining effects not only on tumor cells but also on their microenvironment by inhibiting tumor angiogenesis, stimulating anticancer immune response, and potentially inducing tumor dormancy. In the last 10 years, many phase I/II trials with metronomic chemotherapy in advanced breast cancer were published and will be described in details. Although this treatment approach was initially designed to maintain a stable disease as long as possible for metastatic patients that cannot be cured, as results become evident, researchers and clinicians started looking for new applications of this therapeutic strategy. Biomarkers are being developed to identify reliable surrogate markers of response and also to identify the proper patients to be treated. Nowadays, there are several ongoing trials to identify the optimal regimen and schedule of metronomic chemotherapy in the different settings of breast cancer patients. Most trials are aimed at patients with triple negative disease, because in this setting chemotherapy still represents one of the most reliable option. Finally, the potential development of metronomic chemotherapy in breast cancer is still a matter of research with particular attention to identify biomarkers and individual tumor characteristics that can better address the use of this treatment strategy in the future.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Medical Senology, Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Via Ripamonti, 435, Milan, 20141, Italy

    Elisabetta Munzone & Marco Colleoni

  2. Laboratory of Hematology-Oncology, Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Via Ripamonti, 435, Milan, 20141, Italy

    Francesco Bertolini

Authors
  1. Elisabetta Munzone
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  2. Francesco Bertolini
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  3. Marco Colleoni
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Correspondence to Elisabetta Munzone .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Pharmacology, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Guido Bocci

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Texas, USA

    Giulio Francia

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Munzone, E., Bertolini, F., Colleoni, M. (2014). Metronomic Chemotherapy in Breast Cancers. In: Bocci, G., Francia, G. (eds) Metronomic Chemotherapy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-43604-2_6

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