SM: Chemotherapy: updates and new perspectives

The content of this article has been reviewed by independent peer reviewers to ensure that it is balanced, objective, and free from commercial bias. No financial relationships relevant to the content of this article have been disclosed by the independent peer reviewers. Treatment options for patients with breast cancer have progressively improved over the past 40 years, from an era of no chemotherapy to the introduction of taxanes, hor-monal therapy, and biologic therapy. These advances have resulted in substantial, 15%–20 % improvements in clini-cal outcomes. However, progress has yet to be made to im-prove the prognosis in many breast cancer patients, and research is currently under way to test new tools, or new applications of older tools, to advance breast cancer man-agement. Chemotherapy clearly remains a cornerstone of adjuvant breast cancer treatment, because breast cancer can be very sensitive to the currently available agents. Meanwhile, the era of a one-size-fits-all approach to breast cancer management is over, and the maximum potential of chemotherapy should now be reached by targeting specific populations. Effective biomarkers are therefore needed to optimize chemotherapy, define more selective popula-tions, and clearly tailor treatment. This paper discusses re-cent data, including new trials that are more fully incorporating current knowledge with respect to molecu-lar markers and the underlying biology of breast cancer. The Oncologist 2011;16(suppl 1):30–3