FACULTY COMMENTS

DR RAVDIN: During the past two years, the issue of smaller, ER-positive, HER2-negative, node-negative tumors has become an area of contention and enormous expectation. Ordinarily, these patients with ER-positive disease would most likely receive endocrine therapy, but the question is, would they benefit from chemotherapy in addition to hormone therapy? The idea is that we’ll be able to identify patients who will obtain a particularly low degree of benefit from chemotherapy and be able to prevent overtreatment. The hope is that we will revolutionize treatment for patients with ER-positive disease who are at low risk.

One line of thought is that molecular markers will allow us to use the multigene assays as in the NSABP-B-20 study, which demonstrated that patients with low Oncotype Recurrence Scores did not benefit from chemotherapy. More recently, SWOG presented a node-positive trial at San Antonio evaluating patients who received tamoxifen and were then randomly assigned to chemotherapy or not. Again, the low-risk molecular signature identified patients who obtained no risk reduction from chemotherapy.

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Editor's Note
State of the art 2008
Neil Love, MD

Slides and Faculty Comments

Sentinel Lymph Node Biospy (LSNB) Relative to Neoadjuvant Systemic Therapy

Neoadjuvant Systemic Therapy

Sentinel Node Biopsy Injection Site

Partial Breast Irradiation (PBI)

Genomic Assays: Prediction of Benefit from Chemotherapy

Hormone Receptor-Positive Breast Cancer

Assessment of Her2 Status

- Select Publications

A CME Audio Series and Activity

Faculty Disclosures

Editor's Office