Open up to new treatments

Hours and days after patients first hear that they have been diagnosed with breast cancer can be bewildering and overwhelming. Despite the tumult, it’s important for patients to delve deep into understanding the disease and ask questions.

The patient’s first shot is their best shot at beating cancer. An accurate determination of specific characteristics such as the type and stage of the disease, hormone receptor positivity and HER2 receptor status is important because it determines the type of treatment the patient requires.

Breast cancer patients should also have hope, as cancer treatment has made great strides in the last few decades. With early detection, patients can make a full recovery and live a healthy life. In fact, the earlier patients are detected, the less invasive and aggressive the treatment.

For example, breast-conserving surgery is a viable option for patients detected with early-stage breast cancer. The surgery removes less tissue than mastectomy and leaves the breast looking as close as possible to the way it was before surgery, resulting in a more positive body image for women and better psychosocial scores.

In treatment, the development of targeted drugs has further improved the odds of patients beating cancer. Targeted cancer therapies or drugs block the growth and spread of cancer by attacking specific biomolecules that are involved in cancer signalling pathways versus most standard chemotherapies which act on all rapidly dividing cells whether cancerous or not.

Several targeted drugs have been approved by the FDA to treat specific types of cancer. For example, patients with HER2-positive breast cancer receive the anti-HER2 drug trastuzumab to control growth and spread of the tumour, leading to greatly improved survival.

Immunotherapy is another promising area of targeted cancer treatment, which taps into the ability to use a person’s own immune system to fight cancer. Various immunotherapies have been approved by the FDA, and have been used to treat patients with advanced or metastatic disease.

Recently, the FDA has approved Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for certain cancers. It involves genetic modification of patient’s autologous T-cells to express a receptor specific for a tumour antigen. This helps the patients own cells to find and attack the cancer cells. Remarkable results have been seen in previously untreatable cancers.

Cancer treatments will hopefully continue to get more sophisticated and make the disease a manageable one rather than a fatal diagnosis. Not only treatment, but even the screening of breast cancer is evolving in very exciting ways. The effects of Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning are visible in many industries, and healthcare is certainly no exception.

(The author is senior consultant, medical oncology, Cytecare Hospitals)