Articles in 2009

Members of the nuclear receptor superfamily of transcription factors have been implicated in a broad range of normal physiological and disease processes. There is evidence in support of the involvement of these co-regulators in breast cancer progression. The authors review the role of steroid receptor coactivator-3, which is frequently amplified in breast cancer, and discuss its role in breast cancer risk, outcome and response to endocrine therapy in patients with breast cancer.

Trastuzumab and lapatinib improve survival in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer and there is great interest in developing diagnostic tests that predict which patients are more likely to benefit from specific HER2-directed therapies. This article discusses the predictive role ofHER2mRNA, predictive markers for response to therapy and the mechanisms for overcoming resistance in metastatic disease.

There has been extensive research evaluating the clinical usefulness of genomic biomarkers. High-throughput genomic technologies have revolutionized genomic research but challenges in biomarker assessment include clinical study design, reproducibility and interpretation of results. This Review explores these challenges, focusing on microarray-based gene-expression profiling, and highlights some common failings in study design that have impacted on the clinical use of putative genomic markers.

It has been established that intraperitoneal drug administration is advantageous in patients with tumors confined to the peritoneal cavity. The authors of this Review discuss intraperitoneal drug delivery including the optimal drug, dose and schedule.

Important innovations have been achieved in the development of novel systemic hormonal therapies for the salvage treatment of metastatic castrate-resistant disease. The use of chemotherapy as an adjunct for the treatment of castrate-resistant metastatic disease and local advanced tumors has also resulted in patterns of late toxic effects. The authors review the important advances in the evolution of systemic therapy for the treatment of prostate cancer.

Taxanes are among the most widely used chemotherapy agents for breast cancer. The results of the first-generation taxane trials are reviewed and the authors discuss the possible explanations for the differences observed in these studies. The inclusion criteria for future clinical trials of adjuvant taxane therapy must be revised to account for the molecular heterogeneity of breast cancer.

Stereotactic body radiation therapy has emerged as a novel cancer therapy in the past 10–15 years This review article gives an overview of the background, radiobiologic, technical and clinical aspects of stereotactic body radiation therapy.

Although imatinib mesylate therapy has dramatically improved the prognosis of patients in the advanced phases of chronic myeloid leukemia, room for improvement remains. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors are undergoing evaluation as second-line therapy for patients with imatinib-resistant disease. Kantarjian et al. recently demonstrated that once-daily dasatinib 140 mg is well tolerated and achieves a high response rate.

Sunitinib is a standard first-line therapy for patients with advanced or metastatic clear-cell renal cell carcinoma. In an expanded-access study, sunitinib has demonstrated clinical benefit with an acceptable safety profile in a population of patients that is representative of those seen in clinical practice.

Jørgensen and Gøtzsche quantified the degree of overdiagnosis of breast cancer in five publicly organized mammography screening programs in different parts of the world. Overall, they estimated a total degree of breast cancer (including carcinoma in situ) overdiagnosis of 52%, while overdiagnosis for invasive breast cancer was 35%, a finding with potential implications for both clinical practice and public health.