Quest for the Cure Reflections on the Evolution of Breast Cancer Treatment

This volume is a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art research into autism pathophysiology. Chapters cover a wide range of etiologies from genetics and development to environmental factors. In addition, key cell and behavioral phenotypes are discussed, including cortical and cerebellar phenotypes as well as language and motor outputs. Finally, how genes may be connected to phenotypes in autism is discussed through chapters that cover gene expression in the brain.

This original fourteen chapter book is a brief, slightly autobiographic tale of medical oncologists, surgeons, radiation oncologists, and breast cancer patients in a well-established cancer center in Texas, who pursued the goal of cure for breast cancer. The evolution of improved outcomes in the treatment of microscopic metastatic breast cancer is also the story of the development of adjuvant chemotherapy for post-operative breast disease. The adjuvant therapy of breast cancer came about with the realization that this malignancy, when diagnosed in most patients, had spread beyond the confines of the primary cancer.

• Patient histories in the form of Case Studies are used to illustrate certain issues.
• Devoted to the development of the chemotherapeutic regimens that currently are used to treat patients with advanced breast cancer.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword - by Joni Rodgers

Preface

Chapter 1 - Anatomy of an Oncologist

Case Study - Janet - Highly Sensitive Measurable Metastatic Breast Cancer

Case Study - Susan - Importance of Axillary Node Involvement

Chapter 2 - Milestones along the Road to the Cure

Case Study - Sara - Liver Metastases

Chapter 3 - The Evolving Goal of Cure and Inflammatory Breast Cancer

Case Study - Martha - The Texas Challenge

Chapter 4 - Adjuvant Therapy Advances

Case Study - Joy - Stage IV NED as a Testing Ground for Adjuvant Therapy

Case Study - Carol - Metastasis to Cervical Vertebra

Case Study - Amy - Academia vs. Efficacy

Chapter 5 - Marching Forward

Case Study - Beatta - Second Guessing the System

Case Study - Lisa - The Patient of the Future

Conclusion - Where Do We Stand in the Quest for the Cure?

APPENDICES

Milestones in Adjuvant Therapy

Breast Cancer Stages

Abbreviation Glossary

George R. Blumenschein, M.D. led a team of brilliant young researchers at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center who established Adriamycin as a mainstay of contemporary breast cancer treatment regimens. This book is intended to empower interested individuals by chronicling the development and explaining the rationale underlying contemporary multimodal breast cancer therapy and by providing illustrative patient histories.