Bevacizumab and breast cancer: current therapeutic progress and future perspectives.

Bevacizumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody to VEGF, and the incorporation of bevacizumab to chemotherapy is one of the rapidly evolving areas in the treatment of breast cancer. Bevacizumab in combination with chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone improves progression-free survival and increases the response rate in first-line therapy for locally recurrent or metastatic breast cancer. This approach has been and is still being evaluated for early breast cancer in neoadjuvant and adjuvant settings. Bevacizumab is well tolerated and has an established tolerability profile. Both tumor- and host-related biomarkers of bevacizumab activity, response and benefit are emerging from Phase I, II and III clinical trials. The biomarkers of benefit will ultimately help identify the subgroups of patients who specifically benefit from anti-VEGF therapy with bevacizumab.