Targeted Therapy for Early and Locally Advanced Breast Cancer.

The treatment of patients with breast cancer continues to evolve, with cytotoxic chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, and molecular targeted therapies representing the backbones of modern systemic breast cancer treatment. As we learn better to understand the biology of breast cancer cells, therapies to target specific pathways continue to be developed with the goal of expanding available effective therapy in specific populations. Several targeted drugs with different molecular pathways have achieved approval for metastatic breast cancer, but for early breast cancer trastuzumab is the only one that is currently approved in combination with chemotherapy for adjuvant or neoadjuvant treatment in women with HER2-positive breast cancer. Lapatinib and bevacizumab are both approved for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer and are now investigated in phase III clinical trials testing their effectiveness in the treatment of early breast cancer. In this publication, we review the current status in the treatment of early and locally advanced breast cancer with molecular targeted therapies that are currently approved or in advanced clinical development.