Anew study shows that tamoxifen protects high-risk women against breast cancer for as long as a decade after treatment ends. Joyce Noah-Vanhoucke, PhD, Archimedes Inc, San Francisco, Cali fornia, and colleagues conducted the metaanalysis and found that using tamoxifen to prevent breast cancer in postmenopausal women aged <55 years was cost-effective and saved lives.

Investigators of a phase 2 study comparing 2 dosing schedules of sunitinib (Sutent) as first-line therapy for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) concluded that clinicians should stay with the currently approved dosing regimen of 50 mg daily for 4 weeks followed by a 2-week break. Robert Motzer, MD, attending physician, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, who presented the findings, said the data add to a growing body of evidence favoring the dosing regimen that the US Food and Drug Administration approved for sunitinib.

MILAN—The investigative poly (ADPribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor iniparib (BSI-021) im proved not only progression-free survival (PFS) but also overall survival (OS) in the final analysis of a randomized phase 2 study, presented at the 35th European Society for Medical Oncology Congress by Joyce O’Shaughnessy, MD, of US Oncology and Baylor Sammons Cancer Center, Houston.

CHICAGO—Targeted intraoperative radiotherapy (TIR) for breast cancer, in which radiotherapy is confined to the area of the breast where the tumor has been removed, has been found to be as good as whole breast radiotherapy at reducing breast cancer recurrence. Most important, the new data presented at the 46th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology showed TIR can be carried out in just one hospital visit.

As early as 3000 BC, descriptions can be found on Egyptian papyruses documenting reconstructive techniques used by priest doctors to restore altered appearances to normality. The upper echelons of Egyptian society placed great importance on appearance, and this seems to have been the stimulus for development of modern-day plastic surgery. Read More ›

Cytotoxic chemotherapy is one of the cornerstones for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer (MBC). Read More ›

CHICAGO—Several new agents elicited excitement for the treatment of women with advanced breast cancer, including a novel cytotoxic agent that is the first to improve survival as mono therapy in this challenging patient population.

In an international study, patients with metastatic breast cancer refractory to numerous treatments lived 2.5 months longer when treated with eribulin mesylate, a synthetic analog of the novel halichondrin B family, versus single agents alone.