[New period of systemic treatment for breast cancer]

The systemic adjuvant treatment for breast cancer is showing remarkable progress with targeted therapy, such as Trastuzumab, in addition to cytotoxic chemotherapy. The timing of adjuvant chemotherapy is also shifting from post surgery to pre surgery. In terms of adjuvant endocrine therapy for hormonal receptor positive breast cancer, Aromatase inhibitor now is established as a standard treatment for postmenopausal patients. LH-RH analog is also standard for premenopausal patients with Tamoxifen. Further, longer survival might be expected with the new combination of cytotoxic chemotherapy and Trastuzumab for locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer patients. Because the trend of systemic treatment for breast cancer patients is to focus on maintaining patients' quality of life, targeted therapy with Trastuzumab and/or new upcoming drugs (e. g., Bevacizumab, Lapatinib, Sunitinib), might be the mainstream systemic therapy. In this section, we discuss standard and new systemic therapy for primary, locally advanced, and metastatic breast cancer patients.