CHICAGO — Biopsy of distant metastases may identify a change in tumor biology in a proportion of breast cancer patients, according to a retrospective study.

WAYNE, N.J., June 17 /PRNewswire/ — Bayer Schering Pharma AG and OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, Inc., today announced a global strategic alliance to discover, develop and commercialize novel anti-cancer stem cell therapeutics targeting the Wnt signaling pathway. Cancer stem cells are a subset of tumor cells believed to play a significant role in the establishment, metastasis and recurrence of cancer and agents targeting the Wnt pathway have the potential to be developed as pan-tumor drugs.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For premenopausal women with hormone-receptor positive metastatic breast cancer, combination therapy with goserelin and letrozole appears to be an effective new option, Korean researchers report in the April 26th online issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology

June 10, 2010 (Chicago, Illinois) — For breast cancer patients whose disease has metastasized, tumor biology often changes between primary and metastatic lesions.

CHICAGO — Eribulin, a novel chemotherapy drug derived from a sea sponge, improves survival in heavily-pretreated metastatic breast cancer, researchers found.

CHICAGO — Biopsy of distant metastases may identify a change in tumor biology in a proportion of breast cancer patients, according to a retrospective study.

The estrogen, progesterone, or HER2 receptor status of liver metastases differed from that of the primary breast tumor in a way that altered endocrine therapy or targeted agent treatment in 12.1% of patients, Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, of the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, and colleagues found.

“When safe and easy to perform, a biopsy of the metastatic lesion should be considered in all patients,

Eisai’s eribulin adds 2.5 months to life

* Doctors say results will change practice

* Company won expedited FDA priority review last week

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) - An experimental breast cancer drug made from sea sponges added months to the lives of breast cancer patients whose cancer had come back despite several rounds of chemotherapy, doctors reported on Sunday.

A retrospective study of women with metastatic breast cancer shows that the biological characteristics of their primary tumours – including oestrogen, progesterone, and HER2 status – often changes when cancer spread to the liver, requiring a change in therapy in more than 12 percent of patients.

CHICAGO — Adding the targeted agent everolimus (Afinitor) to therapy for women with metastatic breast cancer resistant to trastuzumab (Herceptin) results in clinical benefit for more than a third of patients, researchers said here.

CHICAGO - Retesting patients with metastatic breast cancer to determine if their tumors overexpress HER2 could predict effectiveness of the experimental treatment trastuzumab-DM1 (T-DM1), researchers said here.