Beyond chemotherapies: Recent strategies in breast cancer treatment

Abstract

In 2018, about 2.1 million women have been diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide. Treatments include—among others—surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or endocrine therapy. The current policy of care tends rather at therapeutic de-escalation, and systemic treatment such as chemotherapies alone are not systematically considered as the best option anymore. With recent advances in the understanding of cancer biology, and as a complement to anatomic staging, some biological factors (assessed notably via gene-expression signatures) are taken into account to evaluate the benefit of a chemotherapy regimen. The first aim of this review will be to summarize when chemotherapies can be avoided or used only combined with other treatments. The second aim will focus on molecules that can be used instead of chemotherapeutic drugs or used in combination with chemotherapeutic drugs to improve treatment outcomes. These therapeutic molecules have emerged from the collaboration between fundamental and clinical research, and include molecules, such as tyrosine kinase inhibitors, CDK4/6 inhibitors, and monoclonal antibodies (such as anti-PD-L1). In the fight against cancer, new tools aiding decision making are of the utmost importance: gene-expression signatures have proven to be valuable in the clinic, notably, to know when chemotherapies can be avoided. When substitution treatments are also available, a big step can be made toward personalized medicine for the patient’s benefit.