Neoadjuvant therapy is a well-established approach for the treatment of locally advanced or inflammatory breast cancer (BC) and has been increasingly used in recent years not only as a management strategy but also as a research tool. Recently, nanoparticle albumin-bound paclitaxel (nab-paclitaxel)/trastuzumab combinations have been associated with promising activity in different clinical settin...

The plasma pyridoxal phosphate concentration was determined in 30 cases of early breast cancer, 21 patients with locally recurrent disease, and 43 patients with systemic metastases. The two groups of advanced breast cancer had significantly lower plasma pyridoxal phosphate levels than 36 healthy women of similar age. Urinary 4-pyridoxic acid excretion was normal in breast cancer. Plasma pyridox...

Most cancer patients suffering from some form of advanced or locally advanced cancer will be treated with anticancer agents to stop the natural evolution of the disease. Anticancer agents developed over the last four decades behave as cytotoxic drugs inducing tumor regression, sometimes also resulting in prolongation of survival. Historically, the direct therapeutic efficacy of such treatments ...

Purpose The current multicenter phase II study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the combination of docetaxel and gemcitabine as neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) for locally advanced breast cancer. Methods A total of 98 patients with stage II-III breast cancer were enrolled. The primary endpoint was pathological complete response (pCR) rate of invasive cancer after the comple...

BACKGROUND Neoadjuvant chemotherapy with concurrent docetaxel, doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide is commonly used for patients with locally advanced breast cancer. Epirubicin is another anthracycline used in breast cancer but the concurrent use of epirubicin and taxane is not well-established. We conducted a single institution, phase II study to assess the efficacy and safety of concurrent docet...

AIM This was a phase II study to assess the activity of a novel neoadjuvant regimen in locally-advanced breast cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS Fifty patients with histological confirmation of locally advanced breast cancer received treatment with gemcitabine 1000 mg/m(2) (day 1) followed by gemcitabine 800 mg/m(2) plus docetaxel 75 mg/m(2) plus pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) 30 mg/m(2) (d...

BACKGROUND Locally advanced breast cancers are more prevalent in underdeveloped countries. Targeted therapy has been improved to identify hallmarks that are specific to these subtypes of tumors. OBJECTIVES We aimed to prospectively assess the expression of Hypoxia inducible factor-1 α and vascular endothelial growth factor-C in locally advanced breast cancer patients. METHODS Thirty women u...

BACKGROUND The aim was to evaluate and correlate anxiety and depression levels with response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer. The study also assessed the effects of family support on distress levels. DESIGN It was a prospective study in a cohort of 84 patients with locally advanced breast cancer. These assessments were done using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression ...

BACKGROUND We investigated the efficacy and safety of anastrozole as neoadjuvant therapy in a group of postmenopausal patients with locally-advanced breast cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS This was an open-label trial, which recruited patients with histopathologically-confirmed unilateral, locally-advanced, estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer (stage IIIA/B). All patients received anastrozole...

Preoperative chemotherapy for breast cancer has been originally proposed in the treatment of locally advanced tumors (T3b-T4) in order to allow radiotherapy or radical mastectomy. Later, it has been employed also for less advanced stages of the disease (T2-T3), to allow conservative surgery. Personal series of 45 patients that underwent preoperative chemotherapy (FAC) for breast cancer stages T...