A day in the life of advanced breast cancer.
Two different 37-year-old breast cancer patients, both mothers of young children, were seen in consultation on the same day.
The first had been referred by a colleague who was concerned that the patient’s ER positive breast cancer had disseminated to her brain despite aggressive standard chemotherapy. She was to undergo a craniotomy and a portion of fresh tumor would be submitted from the surgery to our laboratory for EVA-PCD functional profiling.
The second mother had metastatic triple negative breast cancer, which recurred after aggressive standard chemotherapy.
She underwent neo-adjuvant treatment (preoperative) but at the time of her surgery, there was no evidence of response to the treatment. By the time we met her, only months into her diagnosis, new areas of metastatic disease were cropping up daily.
The EVA-PCD assay results on these two “similar” patients were entirely different.
The results of the first patient with the ER positive tumor and brain metastases clearly identified treatments directed toward the PI3K pathway, with or without chemotherapy.
We are recommending a combination of Everolimus plus chemotherapy.
The second patient with metastatic triple negative breast cancer had a completely different profile.
Indeed, the degree of drug resistance was quite striking. A three-drug combination was among the most active from almost two dozen drugs tested. The other option appeared to be a new class of drugs called the cyclin dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitors.
On a functional level, we used targeted drugs to probe for sensitivity to inhibitors of these cancer signal pathways.
Unlike genomic profiles that tell you whether the gene is present or absent, we can tell whether the gene is driving the tumor. Functional profiling.
One patient is now under my care and the other will begin treatment under the care of a colleague in Orange County, CA.
We will await results of these assay-directed therapies and wish these two young patients every success.