Targeted therapy and genetic profiling of tumours have improved the survival rates of breast cancer patients. JUNE CHEONG reports

Advances in breast cancer treatment are pushing up survival rates.

Such advancements include developments in radiotherapy – which have enabled this treatment option to become more targeted and produce less side effects – and the existence of new chemotherapy and hormonal drugs.
 
Dr Wong Seng Weng, the medical director and consultant medical oncologist at The Cancer Centre at Paragon Medical Centre, said that radiotherapy is now more accurate and this reduces long-term harmful
effects on surrounding organs.

He added: “Improvement in chemotherapy allows previously resistant tumours to be controlled. Having more chemotherapy options allows oncologists to use less of older and more toxic chemotherapy drugs.”

Research has shown that advancements in medical technology have corresponded with improvement in cancer survival rates.

According to Dr Benita Tan, a consultant at the department of general surgery at Singapore General Hospital, a study ontrends in cancer survival in Singapore found that the 10-year survival rate was 64.2 per
cent between 1998 and 2002, up from 38.4 per cent for a similar period 20 years earlier.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in Singapore and the peak age of occurrence is between 40 and 60 years old. According to the Singapore Cancer Registry Interim Report, 5,487 women were
diagnosed with breast cancer from 2002 to 2006.

The latest advances in breast cancer treatment are targeted therapy and tumour genetic profiling.

Targeted therapy is a new type of cancer treatment which employs drugs or other compounds to zero in on and attack cancer cells. Genetic profiling of tumours maps and decodes the genetic information of tumours.
 
Dr Wong said: “Genetic profiling allows me to predict the behaviour of the cancer, particularly its ability to cause a relapse in future.”

One example of how targeted therapy can be used to fight breast cancer is the artificially-created antibody trastuzumab, which may be used in both early and late-stage breast cancer if the target that the
antibody works on is present.

These drugs turn off the growth switch in breast cancer cells which drives cancer cells to grow and proliferate. Their added advantage is that they have minimal side effects.

Besides advancements in breast cancer treatment, Dr Wong noted a shift in the way doctors approach breast cancer treatment which may have boosted survival rates.

He said: “There is a movement towards being more restrained or conservative in the use of surgery and being more aggressive in the use of chemotherapy, targeted therapy and hormonal therapy.”

He added that by directing efforts towards better control of relapse in the rest of the body, the survival rates of women with breast cancer has steadily improved.

When breast cancer is diagnosed at an earlier stage, it is not uncommon to be able to achieve long-term survival in eight or nine out of 10 women.