Hers is "estrogen receptive" which means its growth is fueled by the hormone estrogen, which means some of the newest hormone-based, non-chemotherapy treatments should help slow the growth of her cancer.
"She said her doctor expected she had the most aggressive 'triple-negative' cancer, but testing found that she had two of the three key hormonal receptors _ estrogen and progesterone."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Briefly, estrogen is natural hormone that, among other things, triggers cells to divide. Block the estrogen in some way, you should slow cell division, and cancer grows by cells dividing.
She's taking a drug developed within the last five years or so, Femara, an aromatase inhibitor. It's so new, they don't seem to have finished any 5-year survival trials yet. But the drug seems to be well-tolerated (especially compared to chemo) to work for more patients than Tamoxifin and slow cancer growth more than Tamoxifin.
Tamoxifin blocks the estrogen receptors on cells, like putting a key in a lock. Then no other keys can get in to unlocked the door, to let estrogen in the cell.
Femara, the newer drug, lowers the amount of estrogen in the body. Less estrogen, less chemicals to tell cells to divide, hopefully blocking the spread of cancer.
The AP story doesn't say anything about Elizabeth taking Tamoxifin, just Femara plus a bone-building treatment. No chemo for her right now.
A cancer specialist at NYU quoted in the AP story said patients with cancer recurring only in the bones have a "good chance" at surviving for 10 years.
Elizabeth said she's making 10 years her baseline.
There are lots of things going on in the treatment of breast cancer that are based on interfering with the ability of cancer cells to divide and spread. Other new drugs for estrogen-receptive cancers Zoladex, helps by blocking the sites that produce and release estrogen into the body. Another Faslodex destroys estrogen receptors on cancer cells, all good news for Elizabeth, meaning there are more drugs available that can hopefully keep her cancer from spreading. Avastan, being tested now in combination with Elizabeth's drug, keeps cancer tumors from growing by keeping them from forming a blood supply. No blood supply, no oxygen. The cells can't grow.
My only first-hand experience with metastatic breast cancer is having a carpool partner who died three and a half years ago, after her breast cancer recurred in her lungs. She was only 43 and left behind a daughter in 5th grade and a son in 8th grade.
I was there when she died, kept carpooling with the dad after she was gone, and Elizabeth's news hit me really hard. I really don't want her kids to have to go through what my friend's did.
My friend took tamoxifin, but I'm not sure if they even had the test for estrogen-receptive cancer back then. Then they put her on long-term, maintenance chemo and she finally had a bone-marrow transplant. They didn't have any other options for her back then, and it wasn't that long ago. Her cancer was discovered in her lungs not quite six years ago.
I'm so glad women like Elizabeth have better options than bone-marrow transplants, which someone told my carpool buddy was where the doctors basically "killed you then tried to bring you back to life." And my friend, after going through it, thought that was a perfect description of the so-called treatment.
With bone-marrow transplants, they were trying to kill the cancer after it had spread throughout the body. They took out the patient's own stem cells, then basically nuked the patient half to death to kill every bit of cancer in her body, then put her own stem cells back into her body in hopes it would rebuild her immune system. (Sounds like taking a sledgehammer to someone, doesn't it?)
These new estrogen-related drugs are trying to interfere with the basic biology of how cells divide, working with the body instead of killing things in it. It's everything I heard about 20 years or so ago when I was a reporter and interviewed a doctor who for years headed up the human genome project, to map our genes.
He said one day, we won't treat diseases. We'll cure them, and we'll do it by working within the body's own genes.
These new drugs do that. Block the production of hormones. Block the receptors that let the hormones into the cell. Block the chemical estrogen that signals the cancer cells to divide. If cancer cells can't divide, the cancer can't grow.
I'm not saying Elizabeth's won't grow. So far, the mid-study results that I've found on the web for the drug Elizabeth's taking show that it only delayed the spread of cancer, not stopped it, but that it's working better than tamoxifin, delaying the cancer spread longer and being effective for more women. But it makes treatments like chemo sound primitive.