Dr Feher said the results of the large study "demonstrate the effectiveness and safety of chemotherapy in elderly women with metastatic breast cancer".
Its surprising conclusion: Giving chemotherapy more frequently reduced the number of deaths from breast cancer by 31%.
When used in conjunction with chemotherapy, it can prolong the life of patients with breast cancer.
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Thursday, Amgen shares surged 5% as advisers told the Food and Drug Administration to warn patients not to use the company's top-selling anemia drug for head and neck cancer, breast cancer or in any case where patients might be cured of their cancer by chemotherapy.
And now, the drug, in combination with the chemotherapy Taxol, allows patients with early-stage breast cancer an average of four months without their disease progressing.
Now, in quick succession, Avastin has been shown to extend life by several months in lung, breast and colon cancer, when added on top of chemotherapy.
With this in mind, Jeffrey Rosen and his colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, compared samples from breast-cancer patients taken before and after 12 weeks of chemotherapy.
Edwards was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of the 2004 campaign and underwent surgery and chemotherapy.
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She was undergoing chemotherapy at the time for breast cancer and had just buzzed off her hair in anticipation of losing it all.
The results were shown in the first randomized phase II study comparing trastuzumab-DM1 (T-DM1) to Herceptin (trastuzumab) plus chemotherapy (docetaxel), the current standard of care for first line HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.
After Rovshen was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, Shaw watched her friend suffer through a long procession of chemotherapy, radiation therapy and immunotherapy.
At Friday's press briefing, data are being presented from a five-year, 8, 000-patient study of Novartis' pill Femara, which is used to keep breast cancer from recurring after chemotherapy and surgery.
Dr. PHILOMENA McANDREW (Oncologist): Part of the reason is that we don't have specific targeted therapy that we can use in addition to the chemotherapy, the general chemotherapy that will act to further reduce the risk of spread overtime as well as reduce the risk of a new breast cancer in the other breast.
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