A third of breast cancer patients may not need chemo after all: Spain takes part in global research
Thursday, December 10, 2020 @ 7:14 PM
A GROUND-BREAKING study that could change treatment for breast cancer for the first time in 30 years has included a major contribution by Spanish researchers.
Working with scientists from the USA and South Korea, the team concluded that a third of patients in Spain who would otherwise have been treated with chemotherapy may not, in fact, need it.
A total of 792 women, via 21 Spanish hospitals, made up nearly 20% of the 5,083 patients studied worldwide in trials conducted by Canada's NCIC CTG, France's Unicancer hospital network, the National Cancer Center-Korea, the US-based groups ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, NRG Oncology and The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, and Spain's Breast Cancer Research Group (GEICAM).
The clinical trials were launched by the United States' SWOG Cancer Research Network and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as part of the RxPONDER project, and discussed at the 43rd San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium – held via video conference this year and due to conclude on Saturday.
Women who have gone through the menopause and whose breast cancer is HER2-negative with positive hormone receptors (RH+), with one to three lymph nodes affected and a recurrence score of 25 or less – on a scale of 0 to 100 – make up a third of patients in Spain with breast cancer and, like everywhere else in the world since around 1980, have been treated with chemotherapy and hormone therapy, typically by taking Tamoxifen or similar for five to 10 years after surgery.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com