Innovations in Personalized and Targeted Therapies for Breast Cancer
1East Carolina University, Greenville, USA
2Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, USA
3University of Colorado Cancer Center, Denver, USA
4University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, USA
Innovations in Personalized and Targeted Therapies for Breast Cancer
Description
An explosion of research insight into the biology of breast cancer in recent years has revealed a large variety of heterogeneous molecular pathways defining prognosis and affecting response to therapy and clinical outcomes. Molecular targeting now informs all treatment modalities, including surgery, radiation, and systemic therapies. Personalized therapies are under study and in clinical use for the entire range of locoregional and systemic therapies and are increasingly informed by genomic and proteomic assays, functional imaging, quality of life, and patient preferences. Outcomes are so favorable in biologically low risk breast cancer that current research is studying how to reduce overtreatment through more limited surgery abbreviated or omitted courses of radiation and gene assays to predict the benefit of systemic therapies. On the other end of the spectrum, aggressive molecular subtypes, in particular those in the basal/triple negative category, are the subject of intensification of targeted therapies. The ultimate vision for each individual patient with a newly diagnosed breast cancer will involve a panel of gene assays that will predict the benefit of surgery, radiation, and systemic therapy based on the unique biology of the individual cancer.
This special issue will focus on the innovations in targeted breast cancer therapies helping to advance the science towards the goal of truly personalized medicine. We invite investigators to contribute original research articles as well as review articles describing this exciting area of research and treatment advancements. We are particularly interested in articles describing translational science ready for clinical trials or recent clinical trials that have successfully defined areas of personalized medicine in breast cancer treatment.
Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Clinical or translational studies of reducing therapy in breast cancers with low risk molecular profiles
- Genomics-based drug development and clinical trials for breast cancer subtypes
- Role of modifier genes in cancer prognosis and response to therapy
- Using gene profiles to direct local therapies
- Using functional imaging to define target volumes for surgery or radiation
- Emerging targeted systemic therapies for Her2+, triple negative, and estrogen-positive subtypes
- Immunotherapy
- Gene therapy
- Clinical trial design