HOUSTON – Metastatic cancers are often seen as an incurable form of breast cancer, but now there are promising new treatment options. The results are giving women new hope for a longer life.
For nearly a decade, Carolyn Leonhard thought she'd beaten breast cancer. Then it came back aggressively.
"It came back on my spine, my liver and one of my lymph nodes," Leonhard said.
Because her cancer was hormone-positive, oncologist Dr. Elisa Krill-Jackson put her on a targeted therapy.
"Metastatic breast cancer is not a curable disease; however, we have a lot of great treatments that can put them in remission and that remission can last for many years," Krill-Jackson said.
In addition to a targeted therapy called Letrozole, Krill-Jackson put Leonhard on Imbrance, a new medication that works with targeted therapies to kill more cancer cells for a longer period of time.
"This is targeted at some proteins in the cell, so it allows the cell to be sensitive to hormonal therapy and not to grow," Krill-Jackson said.
After taking the drug for the past few months, Leonhard says her cancer markers have declined dramatically.
"I did a PET scan in February and really, there's no cancer activity," she said.
Patients with metastatic breast cancer may ultimately need chemotherapy if the combo therapy stops working, but so far the maker of Ibrance says its studies have shown the drug has been able to extend the lives of patients by at least 10 months.
Click here to read the results of the clinical trials.