ABSTRACT
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among American women. A National Institute of Health consensus development conference reported that from the year 1990 to 2000, more than 1.5 million women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 30% of them will ultimately die of their disease [1]. Following standard-dose adjuvant therapy, 40-50% of stage II-III patients with four to nine positive axillary lymph nodes and 70-80% of those with ten or more axillary lymph nodes containing tumour will relapse [2,3]. These high recurrence rates for patients treated in the adjuvant setting are disconcerting in light of the fact that stage IV breast cancer is generally incurable with standard therapy [4]. The median progression-free and overall survival duration rates for patients with oestrogen-receptor-negative stage IV breast cancer who receive Adriamycin-containing regimens for metastatic disease are 8.6 and 22 months [4]. Newer agents such as paclitaxel or vinorelbine, respectively, produce complete responses in 12% and 21% of patients with untreated metastatic breast cancer,
with few long-term disease-free survivors [5,6]. It is clear that new therapeutic strategies need to be developed for the treatment of breast cancer, both in the high-risk adjuvant and metastatic settings.
