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Annual Meeting Highlights
November 2016

Optimizing Adjuvant Chemotherapy and Surgery for Early- and Late-Stage Breast Cancer

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Medical Oncology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
JAMA Oncol. 2016;2(11):1399-1400. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2016.3631

The findings presented during the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting will further advance our understanding of, and ability to treat, breast cancer. Anthracycline- and taxane-based chemotherapy are the current standard for adjuvant treatment in high-risk, early-stage, and locally advanced breast cancer. In 2006, the United States Oncology Research (USOR) Trial 9735 showed that treatment with docetaxel and cyclophosphamide (TC) resulted in a significantly higher disease-free survival rate than 4 cycles of doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide (AC).1 These data—in concert with the paradigm shift in chemotherapy use for estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer prompted by genomic signatures and the availability of non-anthracycline options for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive breast cancer—have precipitated a decline in the use of adjuvant anthracyclines.

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