Over 90% of women who get diagnosed with breast cancer today will survive. Those are remarkable odds, and they’re possible because of remarkable advancements in the field. Every major advancement in cancer research has come from a clinical trial. And there’s currently some really exciting breast cancer clinical trials going on.
“It’s always important if patients are interested in the latest treatments that they say to their doctors, are there any clinical trials that may be applicable to me?” said SurvivorNet’s medical advisor Dr. Elizabeth Comen, in an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday morning. “One of the things that we know is that only 3 to 5% of patients participate in clinical trials, and yet, these are where the latest advancements are going to come out.”
Related: The Major Shift in Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer
One area that’s currently being studied is immunotherapy. We know that immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment of several cancers, like melanoma and lung cancer, but can it be used to treat breast cancer as well? “The complicated thing about breast cancer is that there isn’t just one marker that the immune system can identify to attack,” says Dr. Comen. “Each breast cancer is very different and they may be almost cloaked in an invisible shield … when certain immune cells are going to try to attack it, they aren’t able to recognize that a bad cancer is there.”
“A lot of the clinical trials that are coming up now are to trying to figure out, how can we apply these revolutionary immunotherapies to the field of breast cancer?”
There’s also been some major advancements when it comes to deciding on treatment in the past year alone. A study, called the TAILORx trial, used the Oncotype DX test to predict which women will benefit from chemotherapy, and concluded that most women with the most common type of breast cancer don’t need chemotherapy. The study focused on breast cancer that has not spread into the lymph nodes and is hormone receptor-positive. This discovery will likely change treatment for something like 100,000 women.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
Dr. Elizabeth Comen serves as a medical advisor to SurvivorNet. She is a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Read More
Over 90% of women who get diagnosed with breast cancer today will survive. Those are remarkable odds, and they’re possible because of remarkable advancements in the field. Every major advancement in cancer research has come from a clinical trial. And there’s currently some really exciting breast cancer clinical trials going on.
“It’s always important if patients are interested in the latest treatments that they say to their doctors, are there any clinical trials that may be applicable to me?” said SurvivorNet’s medical advisor Dr. Elizabeth Comen, in an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday morning. “One of the things that we know is that only 3 to 5% of patients participate in clinical trials, and yet, these are where the latest advancements are going to come out.”
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Related: The Major Shift in Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer
One area that’s currently being studied is immunotherapy. We know that immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment of several cancers, like melanoma and lung cancer, but can it be used to treat breast cancer as well? “The complicated thing about breast cancer is that there isn’t just one marker that the immune system can identify to attack,” says Dr. Comen. “Each breast cancer is very different and they may be almost cloaked in an invisible shield … when certain immune cells are going to try to attack it, they aren’t able to recognize that a bad cancer is there.”
“A lot of the clinical trials that are coming up now are to trying to figure out, how can we apply these revolutionary immunotherapies to the field of breast cancer?”
There’s also been some major advancements when it comes to deciding on treatment in the past year alone. A study, called the TAILORx trial, used the Oncotype DX test to predict which women will benefit from chemotherapy, and concluded that most women with the most common type of breast cancer don’t need chemotherapy. The study focused on breast cancer that has not spread into the lymph nodes and is hormone receptor-positive. This discovery will likely change treatment for something like 100,000 women.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
Dr. Elizabeth Comen serves as a medical advisor to SurvivorNet. She is a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Read More
