Treatment challenges for community oncologists treating postmenopausal women with endocrine-resistant, hormone receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative advanced breast cancer

Abstract

Hikmat Abdel-RazeqDepartment of Internal Medicine, King Hussein Cancer Center, Amman, JordanI read with great interest the review written elegantly by Gradishar addressing the challenges that community oncologists face in treating postmenopausal women with endocrine-resistant, hormone receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2)-negative advanced breast cancer in your journal.1As the author correctly stated, resistance to endocrine therapy in women with hormone receptor-positive disease is very frequent and almost inevitable.Understanding the multiple known mechanisms for endocrine resistance has helped physicians and researchers target these pathways.2 Many of the recently introduced drugs, such as the mTOR inhibitor everolimus3 and the cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK 4/6) inhibitor palbociclib,4 are in clinical practice and have been already incorporated in international guidelines.5View original paper by Gradishar.

Keywords

• Breast Cancer
• Hormonal therapy
• chemotherapy
• Endocrine resistance