Program Overview
Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy in women in the United States and is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer death. Among the taxane family, paclitaxel and docetaxel are the 2 most widely used agents and have shown important clinical benefits in both adjuvant and metastatic settings. However, this clinical success has been accompanied by significant adverse events and primary (de novo) as well as acquired (secondary) resistance. In addition, an increasing proportion of early BC patients are receiving taxanes as part of their adjuvant treatment, which clearly demands new agents as first-line therapy for these patients in the event a relapse occurs. Thus, new agents with better efficacy and an improved toxicity profile are needed. Epothilones are a novel class of microtubule-targeting agents sharing a mechanism of action similar to that of the taxanes and having a more potent antiproliferative activity in various tumor cell lines, particularly in cases of taxane-resistant BC. Recent clinical trials have demonstrated that ixabepilone, both as monotherapy and in combination with capecitabine, improves outcomes of patients with metastatic BC resistant to anthracyclines and/or taxanes. Given these developments, it is important that clinicians become knowledgeable about the evolving treatment paradigms in BC. This CME-certified Medscape monograph will highlight the current and emerging strategies in the treatment of advanced BC.
