Berlin, Germany: One of the first of a series of trials to investigate the use of sorafenib – a targeted anti-cancer drug – for the treatment of advanced breast cancer has found that if it is combined with the chemotherapy drug, capecitabine, it makes a significant difference to the time women live without their disease worsening.

Removal of the primary breast tumour in women whose cancer has already spread to other parts of the body can have a significant effect on their survival, Dutch researchers have found. Dr Jetske Ruiterkamp, a surgical resident from the Jeroen Bosch Hospital, Den Bosch, The Netherlands, working under the supervision of Dr Miranda Ernst, told Europeís largest cancer congress, ECCO 15 - ESMO 34 in Berlin today, that her research meant that women who were diagnosed at a late stage of the disease could expect to survive longer.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many women with breast cancer who could benefit from the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab (Herceptin) are not receiving it, while other women are treated with trastuzumab even though they’ve never been tested to see if their tumors are likely to respond.

“The limited evidence available suggests that there are important variations in testing practices and key gaps in knowledge about those practices,” Dr. Kathryn A. Phillips from the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleagues report in the September 14 online issue of Cancer.

Dr. Phillips and her team reviewed the medical literature to determine the extent of testing for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) in clinical practice in the US.

In one cohort of metastatic breast cancer patients

Washington, DC — With the goal of tailoring cancer interventions for the individual, researchers at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown have published the results of a prospective study that validates the use of a simple blood test to help doctors more reliably assess treatment effectiveness for patients with metastatic breast cancer. These findings were released on-line today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.