[A case of liver metastasis of breast cancer responding to letrozole].

The patient was a 68-year-old woman who had a right mastectomy performed in another hospital in 1987. Her right breast tumor was histologically diagnosed IDC and ER(-), with an uncertain PgR and HER2. Tamoxifen was administered as adjuvant therapy for five years after surgery. Because she had abdominal pain in January, 2007, she consulted her family doctor. At that doctor's hospital, metastatic tumors of the liver were found, and she was therefore referred to our hospital. A liver biopsy of the tumor was conducted in our hospital, and hormone therapy was also conducted because her cancer status was ER(+), PgR(+), HER2(0), and was not life-threatening. Hormone therapy had a good effect on the tumor. ER, PgR and HER2 expression might make the difference between a primary tumor and a metastatic one, as in this case. Therefore, we should perform biopsies on metastatic tumors to determine the best treatment method. There is a possibility that hormone therapy will become an effective therapeutic procedure for breast cancer patients who are hormone receptor positive, are not in a life threatening situation, and have had a long, disease-free survival. We reported one case in which the aromatase third generation inhibitor letrozole was effective for treating liver metastases of breast cancer.

[A case of multidrug-resistant breast cancer associated with multiple hepatic and bone metastases for which cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, and 5-fluorouracil chemotherapy proved effective].

A 51-year-old patient had recurrent breast cancer with liver metastases. After mastectomy, she received CEF and many kinds of hormone therapy and chemotherapy after recurrence. Her liver metastases had been controlled by CMF therapy for 9 months. CMF therapy is good at maintaining the QOL of recurrent patients during treatment because of less toxicity and is even useful for multidrug-resistant tumors like this patient with liver metastases after anthracycline and taxane treatment. CMF is thought to be still useful after development of new drugs for recurrent breast cancer.

Data acquisition for the histoculture drug response assay in lung cancer.

OBJECTIVE: Application of the histoculture drug response assay for lung cancer was investigated by using data acquired from lung cancer specimens. METHODS: From May 1994 through February 2005, histoculture drug response assay data were obtained from 359 lung cancer specimens held in our institute. We examined chemosensitivities of the tissues to cisplatin, doxorubicin, mitomycin C, 5-fluorouracil, docetaxel, paclitaxel, etoposide, irinotecan, and gemcitabine. Cutoff inhibition rates were determined with each drug for non-small cell lung cancer and were used to calculate predictabilities for chemotherapy responses. RESULTS: The evaluability of the histoculture drug response assay was high at 97.4%. Good predictability, including true-positive and true-negative rates of 73.2% and 100%, respectively, with an accuracy of 83.0%, was observed. CONCLUSION: The histoculture drug response assay appears to be applicable to non-small cell lung cancer for the prediction of responses to chemotherapy.

[Cut-off level of docetaxel, paclitaxel and gemcitabine in histoculture drug response assay for non-small cell lung cancer].

Cut-off levels of docetaxel (DOC), paclitaxel (PAC), and gemcitabine (GEM) in histoculture drug response assay are determined by data acquisition of non-small cell lung cancer. Inhibition rates were 47.5 +/- 22.2% in DOC (n=181), 66.6 +/- 25.1% in PAC (n=57), and 25.4 +/- 18.4% in GEM (n=63), respectively. Cut-off levels were determined as 50% in DOC, 60% in PAC, and 30% in GEM. The positive rates such as 47.5% in DOC, 68.4% in PAC, and 33.3% in GEM were obtained.