Glimmer of hope over breast tumours

Women who have breast cancer tumours which have become resistant to anti-hormone drugs have been given a glimmer of hope as new research suggested treatment could "re-sensitise" the tumour.

Many breast cancers are fuelled in their growth by the hormone oestrogen and women take drugs known as aromatase inhibitors to reduce the oestrogen in their body and restrict the cancer's progress. But after time the tumour becomes resistant to this treatment and starts to grow.

Now American researchers said early data from a study of women with hormone-receptor positive metastatic breast cancer suggests that a drug called sorafenib can reverse this process.

"At first, the tumour's growth is halted because the aromatase inhibitor is depriving the cancer of the oestrogen it needs to grow," says Claudine Isaacs, clinical director of breast cancer programme at Georgetown University Medical Centre's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre.

"Eventually, though, the cancer will figure out another way to thrive in the absence of the oestrogen."

She and her colleagues are conducting a clinical trial to see if the new approach can destroy the machinery the tumour creates in order to grow without the oestrogen.

They presented results to a breast cancer symposium in the US which showed that of 27 patients studied, 26% benefited from taking both sorafenib and the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole.

She said: "Given what we know about the ineffectiveness of sorafenib alone in metastatic breast cancer, we believe the benefit that we're seeing may be attributable to the restoration of sensitivity to aromatase inhibitors.

"To manage breast cancer long term, it's apparent that we may need to continually switch drugs to keep up with how a cancer evolves and evades each approach. In a sense, for each step back, we hope to take two steps forward."

Dr Sarah Cant, policy manager at breast cancer charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: "Any research to investigate drug resistance is to be welcomed, although this particular study is still at a very early stage. This is a very small trial and more extensive research involving many more patients is needed before we will know whether this treatment is effective in reducing drug resistance."

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