Bevacizumab in Combination With Chemotherapy in the Neo-adjuvant Setting for HER2 (-) Breast Cancer

The aim of administering systemic therapy prior to surgery is to make a locally advanced tumor operable or to allow conservative surgery in the case of a T2-T3 tumor. Therefore, treatment is expected to induce a maximum tumor shrinkage within a short period. In addition and based on the anti-angiogenic MoA, bevacizumab (Avastin) is to be administered as early as possible during the disease stages. Bevacizumab has already been tested in the neoadjuvant setting with encouraging results. In a first trial patients with inoperable locally advanced breast cancer received docetaxel with or without bevacizumab with five clinical Complete Responses and 24 Partial Responses. In a second trial there was also reported the results of the combination of bevacizumab with doxorubicin and docetaxel for the treatment of inflammatory breast cancer. Then, a set of studies of primary therapy exploring the activity of different regimens have confirmed the role of baseline pathological features of the tumor in predicting the responsiveness to primary therapy. A 22% pathological complete responses (pCR) rate has been achieved in a study combining bevacizumab together with Xeloda and Taxotere suggesting that bevacizumab addition to chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant treatment is feasible showing promising activity while no unexpected toxicities were reported. Thus, a very high interest exists from our clinicians mostly within our cooperative groups which cover the largest national oncology centers to be involved and run such a study.