Dr. Gail Wright Co-Authors Study on Combination Therapy
for Patients with Advanced HER2-Negative Breast Cancer
New Port Richey, FL – May 14, 2018…… Dr. Gail Wright, who practices at Florida Cancer Specialists (FCS) locations in Hudson and New Port Richey was a co-author of a study manuscript recently published online in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. The study investigated the use of ruxolitinib (an oral targeted therapy drug) or placebo in combination with capecitabine (a chemotherapy drug that slows or stops cancer cell growth) in patients with advanced HER2-negative breast cancer and elevated C-reactive protein (CRP), which is a marker of systemic inflammation.
As stated in the study by Dr. Wright and her colleagues, “Metastatic breast cancers are considered incurable, with 5-year survival rates of approximately 26%. Primary goals for treatment are disease control, cancer-related symptom palliation, and quality of life maintenance… There is an unmet need to better understand MBC biology and the mechanisms underlying resistance to curative treatment.”
The study further specified, “Mammary gland development requires signaling through the Janus-associated kinase (JAK)/signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) pathway, which is often hyperactivated in breast cancer.” According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), JAK signaling is very complex and can become dysregulated or impaired, which may lead to cell proliferation and increased levels of inflammatory cytokines. Inhibiting one component of aberrant JAK may reduce dysregulated JAK signaling in general.
Ruxolitinib inhibits dysregulated JAK signaling, which mediates a number of factors that are important for immune function. Previous trials of ruxolitinib in pancreatic cancer patients “revealed that patients with high systemic inflammation had significantly prolonged overall survival (OS), prolonged progression-free survival (PFS), and a greater reduction in tumor burden, with ruxolitinib + capecitabine compared with placebo + capecitabine.”
While findings from Dr. Wright’s study showed no significant improvement in overall survival (OS) or progression-free survival (PFS), the addition of ruxolitinib to capecitabine was “generally tolerable, overall response rate (ORR) was numerically greater, and a more favorable change in health-related quality of life was observed.”
To access the article abstract:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29675680 – OR –
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10549-018-4770-6
Other sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5480189/ |
