China News Service, Guangzhou, December 11 (Cai Minjie, Chen Yun) Triple-negative breast cancer is known as the "most difficult to treat" breast cancer.
Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center announced on the 11th that the breast cancer team composed of Yuan Zhongyu, chief physician of internal medicine, Wang Xi, chief breast physician, and Wang Shusen, professor of internal medicine, completed the study on triple-negative breast cancer in the form of original research. In the medical journal "Journal of the American Medical Association" (JAMA).
According to reports, this is the first breast cancer clinical study led by Chinese scholars published by JAMA.
As a subtype of breast cancer, triple-negative breast cancer is the subtype with the highest recurrence rate and mortality due to its high degree of malignancy, high risk of recurrence, poor prognosis, and lack of effective specific treatment strategies in the past.
"Three-negative breast cancer accounts for about 15% of female breast cancers. The main reasons for the poor prognosis of this breast cancer are easy recurrence and metastasis and lack of effective treatment." Yuan Zhongyu introduced that chemotherapy is the main method to reduce the risk of early triple-negative breast cancer recurrence, but it is effective The bottleneck has been reached, clinically, there is an urgent need for more effective methods to improve the cure rate of early triple-negative breast cancer.
Capecitabine is a classic chemotherapeutic drug that has been used clinically for many years. Its low-dose, continuous oral "beating" administration method has good effectiveness and safety in advanced tumors. Among them, rhythmic chemotherapy refers to chemotherapy. The drug adopts a low-dose (usually 1/10 to 1/3 of the conventional dose) and high-frequency (no interval or short interval) medication, which has the characteristics of low toxicity and effectiveness.
In 2010, the aforementioned breast cancer team carried out a multi-center, randomized controlled study called "Phase III clinical study of capecitabine rhythm maintenance after standard treatment for operable triple-negative breast cancer."
After ten years of joint efforts by 13 domestic cooperative units, the study was completed this year, and the study found.
As maintenance therapy, capecitabine rhythm chemotherapy reduces the risk of recurrence of early triple-negative breast cancer by more than 30%, and increases the 5-year disease-free survival rate of patients from 73.0% to 82.8%.
"The disease-free survival rate is increased by 10%, which is equivalent to that the treatment can save 1 out of 4 relapsed patients without recurrence, that is, 27,000 cases of triple-negative breast cancer patients can be saved each year." Yuan Zhongyu said that the safety of rhythm chemotherapy is good. 83% of patients can complete the whole course of treatment without serious side effects.
It is worth mentioning that the total cost of capecitabine maintenance treatment for one year is less than 4,000 yuan, and patients only need to bear about 1,000 yuan after reimbursement.
The above-mentioned study is currently the first large-scale phase III clinical trial in the world that uses rhythm chemotherapy for maintenance treatment after standard treatment of triple-negative breast cancer with positive results. At the 2020 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, known as the "Oscars" of oncology, Professor Wang Xi presented the results of the research on behalf of the team. Recently, the research was published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" in the form of original research, marking that its innovation, rigor and effectiveness have been recognized by international authoritative medical organizations. (Finish)