A study found that women could switch drugs without waiting for scans showing cancer progression, which improved their quality of life.
Breast cancer patients whose tumors have spread to other parts of their bodies live from scan to scan. Is their treatment working? Or will they learn their cancer is growing again?
But a new study sponsored by the drug company AstraZeneca showed that there is an alternative: Instead of waiting for a scan to show that a cancer is growing, it’s possible to find early signs that the cancer is resisting the drugs that were controlling it.
To do that, researchers used a blood test to find mutations in cancer cells that let the tumors defy standard treatments. Early detection allowed patients to be switched to a different drug that overcomes the mutated cancer. The result was to keep the cancers in check longer, and allow patients to have more than an extra year without deteriorating quality of life.
The study was reported Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Breast cancer specialists who were not associated with the study applauded the results, saying blood tests could transform the way they monitor patients.
“This is a paradigm change,” said Dr. Mary Disis, professor of medicine and oncology at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
