Gunter von Minckwitz

..Poly(adenosine diphosphate-ribose) polymerase (PARP) plays a key role in DNA repair and cellular stress response. Inhibitors of PARP show promising clinical activity in metastatic, triple-negative or BRCA-mutated breast cancer...

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..Neoadjuvant treatment is used by an increased number of patients with breast cancer. This study reviews the current literature on how new research findings have impacted patients and treatment selection...

..The use of neoadjuvant treatment with pCR as a surrogate of overall survival will allow the rapid evaluation and comparison of these and other much-needed new treatments for TNBC...

..Strategies are currently being developed on how locoregional treatment can be reduced in patients with a pathological complete response. These aim to reduce the extent of surgery or even avoid surgery completely...

..The exact definition of pathologic complete response (pCR) and its prognostic impact on survival in intrinsic breast cancer subtypes is uncertain...

..However, complete eradication of adjacent DCIS is frequently observed. HER2-overexpression of the invasive ductal component decreases in a subset of tumors, which showed less tumor regression...

..Recent findings suggest pCR might not be the appropriate surrogate for long-term outcome in patients with hormone receptor-positive and HER2-positive tumors...

..High-risk node-negative patients should receive chemotherapy. Anthracycline-based regimens are accepted as a standard, the additional benefit of taxanes remains an open question...

..To review the recent literature on neoadjuvant treatment of breast cancer with respect to insights that might be used for better using systemic treatment in early breast cancer...

..Here, we report the final analysis on overall survival...

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..Safety data for combining bevacizumab, everolimus, or lapatinib with anthracycline- and taxane-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer are limited...

..CONCLUSION Adding capecitabine to or prolonging duration of neoadjuvant EC plus docetaxel does not result in higher efficacy at surgery...

..In the German Breast Group 26/Breast International Group 03-05 trial, we investigated if trastuzumab treatment should be continued beyond progression...

..Today, premenopausal women with increased risk for breast cancer have only limited nonsurgical options to reduce their risk...

..To investigate the predictive value of clinical and biological markers for a pathological complete remission after a preoperative dose-dense regimen of doxorubicin and docetaxel, with or without tamoxifen, in primary operable breast cancer...

..Combination of chemotherapy with trastuzumab should be considered when neoadjuvant treatment is given to patients with HER2-positive breast cancer...

..We compared the response of nonresponding patients who continued the same treatment with that of patients who switched to a well-tolerated non-cross-resistant regimen...

..The relationship between extended chemotherapy and pathological complete response at surgery was investigated in a clinical trial...

..Furthermore, most physicians tend towards therapy regimens without the use of dose-dense, highly active taxane-based treatments because of a lack of data regarding toxicities of these compounds in older patients...

..Neoadjuvant chemotherapy can increase the rate of breast-conserving surgery in patients with operable breast cancer. However, uncertainty remains regarding surgical procedures and predictors for successful breast-conserving surgery...

..Patients with an AR-negative tumour have a higher chance of achieving a pCR than those with an AR-positive one. But, patients with AR-positive tumours have a better survival especially if they did not achieve a pCR...

..Dose-dense and sequential administration of cytotoxic drugs are current approaches to improve outcomes in patients with early-stage breast cancer...

..Preliminary data suggest that pegfilgrastim given on day 4 (P4) might be superior to pegfilgrastim on day 2 (P2) in reducing grade 4 leucopenia...

..Chemotherapy dose delay and/or reduction lower relative total dose intensity (RTDI) and may affect short- and long-term outcome of metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients...

..79 (95% CI=0.54-1.14; P=0.19). It is concluded that medical ovarian ablation with goserelin represents a valid option for premenopausal patients with node-negative breast cancer...

..Recommendations are made regarding terminology, indications, regimen, diagnosis before treatment, monitoring of efficacy, tumor localization, surgery, pathologic evaluation, and postoperative treatment...

..This report presents results of a prospective, open-label, randomized study, designed to evaluate the benefits of switching to anastrozole after 2 years of tamoxifen treatment, compared with continuing on tamoxifen for 5 years...

..The obtained consensus was updated in two subsequent meetings in 2004 and 2006. The most recent conference on recommendations on the use of NST took place in 2010 and forms the basis of this report...

..The aim of the RiTa trial is to establish a feasible combination of bendamustine and paclitaxel in a weekly schedule in anthracycline pre-treated metastatic breast cancer patients...

..Little is known about the treatment of breast cancer during pregnancy. We aimed to determine whether treatment for breast cancer during pregnancy is safe for both mother and child...

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..Breast carcinoma during pregnancy (BCP) is a difficult clinical situation, as it appears to put the health of the mother in conflict with that of the fetus...

..In conclusion, e-NOS and i-NOS are weakly expressed in the MCF-7 cell line, but are stimulated differently. The MCF-7 cell may contain both a constitutive NOS and an inducible NOS...

..However, when used as primary prophylaxis with granulocyte growth factors, as well as antibiotics, this regimen is considered as a safely-applicable standard option for early breast cancer treatment...

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..An increased NO concentration catalyzed by NO synthase (NOS) is cytotoxic and can promote apoptosis. The expression of endothelial NOS (e-NOS) and induced NOS (i-NOS) was examined in various breast tumors...

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..The clinical benefit and safety of the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor gefitinib ('Iressa')1 was evaluated in this Phase II, multicentre study of patients with taxane and anthracycline pretreated, metastatic breast cancer...

..We aimed to test the efficacy of ovarian function preservation with the LHRHa goserelin in patients with breast cancer...

..In the following, an overview is given on the most important aspects in diagnosis and therapy of metastatic breast cancer. For detailed aspects, a comprehensive set of slides including a more complete bibliography may be accessed under ...

..51; 95% CI, 0.88 to 2.59; P = .13). CONCLUSION No evidence of a difference in response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy was found by tumor stage when analysis was adjusted for baseline characteristics...