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The ATLAS trial demonstrated improved survival for women with oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer who continued taking tamoxifen for 10 years compared to stopping at 5 years. Women for whom absolute benefit outweighs adverse-effects should be selected based on their risk of recurrence beyond 5 years; support must be provided to maintain compliance.
Abiraterone is an androgen biosynthesis inhibitor that further lowers testosterone in men receiving standard androgen deprivation therapy for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Previously shown to improve survival in patients after treatment with docetaxel, abiraterone has demonstrated benefits in a new phase III trial in men who are chemotherapy naive.
Researchers now expect that samples obtained from biobanks are accompanied with well-annotated clinical data. Opened in 2010, the Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank takes this criterion a step further: researchers obtaining tissues are required to return the data they generate from every sample back to the Tissue Bank.
Many methods are available for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, ranging from noninvasive stool tests to endoscopy. In this Review, E. J. Kuipers et al. argue that the strength of any single test must be viewed in the context of a range of factors across the screening programme, including test characteristics, uptake, screenee autonomy, cost, endoscopy performance and long-term follow-up.
Agents targeting the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway have been shown to be safe and effective in treating a number of tumour types. This Review outlines the background to these inhibitors and discusses the second-generation inhibitors of this pathway. The authors propose that the way forward for the development of inhibitors of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway might be a systems biology approach and biomarker-driven studies.
Combination strategies of molecular-targeted agents (MTAs) are being used in the hope of optimizing antitumour efficacy and to minimize the development of resistance, but very little effort is focused on molecular vulnerabilities of normal tissues. This Review discusses the main toxicities and the lack of tolerability of some common MTA combinations, and highlights what steps can be introduced for new preclinical testing paradigms for the assessment of chronic toxicities.
The majority of patients with cancer do not die as a result of the primary tumour, rather from the metastases that arise from that tumour. The mechanisms and markers of metastasis have, therefore, been a main focus of both clinical and preclinical research. This Perspectives article discusses the hurdles that need to be overcome to successfully translate the preclinical metastasis research into the clinic.
