Health Conditions

What is on the horizon?

The FDA recently approved Avastin (also known as bevacizumab) to be used in combination with Taxol (also known as paclitaxel) to treat women with advanced breast cancer who have not started chemotherapy. Studies showed that this combination increased the time that breast cancer did not progress. Avastin is a new class of drugs that block the formation of blood vessels that supply the cancerous tumors, thus eliminating the source of nutrition for the cancer cells.

The American Cancer Society has funded more than 184 research projects relating to breast cancer. A few areas of research include:

• Anti-angiogenesis drugs - These drugs are theorized to block the supply of new blood vessels to breast tumors.
• New molecular targets for anticancer drugs
• Gene therapy - an area of interest to many researchers. The idea here would be to replace the defective genes in cancer cells with normal, healthy genes, thereby correcting the cells' overactive replication problem. The challenge is finding a way to get the healthy genes into the cancer cells.
• The effect of presurgery hypnosis on side effects, recovery, and cost of breast cancer treatment
• How a woman's genetic makeup determines her response to treatment
• Causes of breast cancer - The Sister Study is following 50,000 women ages 35-74 whose sisters (not themselves) have had breast cancer for 10 years to try to identify causes of breast cancer.
• Immunotherapy - vaccines containing specific antigens (particles that generate an immune response) located on the surface of the breast are currently being studied.

There are currently more and more studies that are examining the effects of lifestyle factors and habits that can alter breast cancer risk. Many studies are looking into the effects of exercise, weight gain or loss, and diet on the risk. With the sequencing of the human genome, the advances in breast cancer prevention and treatment related to genes will continue to accelerate.