Advances in Treatment of Metastatic Breast cancer

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in the world and the most frequent canceramong women with approximately 1.7 million new cancer cases diagnosed yearly. Despiteimprovements in the early detection of breast cancer and the development of more effectivesystemic therapies, about 30% of patients with early disease will relapse with distant metastases ,and metastatic disease remains the leading cause of death in those patients with breast cancer .Rapid evolution of targeted therapies and understandings of molecular biology and genetics ofbreast cancer have improved metastatic breast cancer (MBC) outcomes in recent years however,many physicians still believe that the metastatic disease remains largely incurable, and the goals oftreatment for MBC are to delay disease progression and to prolong survival with maintaining agood quality of life. However, many physicians also experience that it is possible to obtain longterm survival using standard treatments in small number of cases .In recent years, the molecular mechanisms driving the heterogeneous treatment response inBC are better elucidated. This has fueled the development of novel targeted agents, includinginhibitors of PARP, CDK4/6, PI3K/AKT/mTOR, multiple kinases, or immune checkpoint, for thetreatment of specific molecular subtypes of BC. This brief review focuses on the potentials ofclinical response at initial therapy of MBC and early detection of metastatic disease of thepossibility of cure of MBC patients.