Neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced breast cancer: A pilot-observational study

Locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) remains major clinical issue with regard to selection and duration of therapy since many years. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) is multimodality program, established to treat LABC. Many research tasks are ongoing to develop specific neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimen with specific duration to improve long-term control of LABC.

Forty-seven patients diagnosed with LABC were Included and analyzed to compare the outcomes [pathological complete response (pCR), clinical response, overall response rate (ORR), disease control rate, overall survival and progression-free survival]. These patients treated with either combination of anthracycline and taxane-based chemotherapy or anthracycline-based chemotherapy.

There was no any statistical significance with respect to demographic data treated of patients between two arms (P>0.05). Patients underwent TAC chemotherapy had pCR 20.8% whereas FAC/FEC chemotherapy patients had pCR 13% (P=0.48). Higher ORR was noted in TAC chemotherapy arm (75%) when compared with FAC/FEC chemotherapy arm (60.9%) (P=0.29). The study also shows better disease control rate in TAC chemotherapy arm (95.8%) as compared to FAC/FEC chemotherapy arm (82.6%). There was no statistical significance in overall survival (P=0.31) and progression-free survival (P=0.51) between two arms.

Despite of the superiority of combination of anthracycline and taxane-based chemotherapy over the anthracycline-based chemotherapy in the present study, further pivotal studies should be conducted to confirm the combination of anthracycline and taxane-based chemotherapy as a better neoadjuvant regimen for treatment of LABC tumors.