Current Cancer Therapy Reviews - Volume 11, Issue 4, 2015

The HSP response is implicated in conferring to breast and gynecologic malignancies different sensitivities to anticancer therapies including chemotherapy, endocrine therapy and immunotherapy (we are in the need of more studies about radiotherapy). The heat shock proteins are mainly implicated in cell death mechanisms, in cell differentiation including epithelial-mesenchymal transition, in tumor dormancy, in an Read More

Preclinical laboratory science has revealed multiple new targets for breast cancer therapy. Clinical trials targeting key signaling pathways are underway and a number of new drugs have been approved for treatment. Targeting of growth factor receptors by monoclonal antibodies and tyrosine kinase inhibitors were among the first to be approved, but new small molecules inhibiting the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase sign Read More

Chemoresistance is a major cause of breast cancer recurrence and death. Currently, drug-resistant disease is treated by selection of another drug(s), without understanding the molecular mechanism(s) involved in a given patient’s chemoresistance. Better understanding of chemoresistance may enable a more informed selection of chemotherapeutic agents and improve patient outcomes. The article review Read More

Trastuzumab has been clearly demonstrated to improve overall survival for both early and metastatic HER2 positive breast cancer. However, despite the improved clinical outcomes seen with the addition of HER2 targeted therapy to conventional cytotoxic agents, the response rates remain between 30-55% and the majority of patients with advanced breast cancer experience disease progression within 1 year. In this Read More

Uterine epithelial cancers are the most common type of gynecologic cancer in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimated 53,000 new cases of uterine cancers in 2014 with 8,600 deaths from advanced or recurrent cases, 99% of which are endometrial cancer. The 5-year survival rate of low-stage, low-grade endometrioid adenocarcinoma is greater than 90%. In contrast, advanced stage endometrioid ade Read More

Ovarian cancer represents the second most common gynecologic cancer in the United States, with an estimated 22,000 new diagnoses and 14,000 deaths attributed in 2014 [1]. While the term loosely encompasses a large and varied assortment of malignancies, greater than 90% of ovarian cancers are epithelial carcinomas. Again within this category, there are a number of different histologic subtypes however, 60-70% of o Read More

Uterine sarcomas comprise endometrial stroma tumors (EST) and uterine leiomyosarcomas (ULMS), with ESTs accounting for less than 2% and ULMS accounting for approximately 1% of uterine neoplasms. Recent classifications of ESTs denote as many as four categories: benign endometrial stromal nodule (ESN), low-grade endometrial stromal sarcomas (ESS), high-grade endometrial stromal sarcomas (HGESS), and undiffere Read More