Doubled in 20 years: metastatic breast ca survival has increased.(Gynecology)

SAN ANTONIO -- Overall survival in metastatic breast cancer patients markedly improved during a recent 20-year period, Dr. Tobias Lekberg said at a breast cancer symposium sponsored by the Cancer Therapy and Research Center.

He credited better drugs and improved surgical and radiotherapy techniques for the clinically meaningful survival gain documented in his study of 2,314 Swedish breast cancer patients who developed distant metastases during 1979-1999.

Median survival climbed steadily from 10.8 months in patients who developed metastatic disease during 1979-1982 and 22.1 months for the period between 1995 and 1998. Four-year survival rose from 11.5% during the first time period to 28.4% in the last time period, added Dr. Lekberg of the Stockholm Breast Cancer Study Group.

Despite this significant progress, he stressed that metastatic breast cancer remains an incurable disease. The treatment goals should be palliation and maintaining quality of life.

Therapeutic highlights in metastatic breast cancer presented at the meeting included:

* Next-generation taxane shows enhanced efficacy. The investigational agent Abraxane achieved nearly double the tumor response rate, compared with Taxol (paclitaxel), which has long been one of the most effective chemotherapy agents, in a phase III comparative trial.

Abraxane consists of paclitaxel bound to albumin in a novel solvent-free nanoparticle formulation that greatly enhances the taxane's selectivity for and intracellular availability within tumor cells. The tumor response rate was 33% for Abraxane, compared with only 19% for Taxol in a 454-patient randomized trial sponsored by American Pharmaceutical Partners Inc.