The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is an international scientific symposium for interaction and exchange among basic scientists and clinicians in breast cancer.

The objective of the symposium is to provide state of the art information on the experimental biology, etiology, prevention, diagnosis, and therapy for breast cancer and pre-malignant breast disease, to an international audience of academic and private physicians and researchers.

The 29th annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium was held from December 14 - 17 in 2006.

Here is a recap of the coverage of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium on The Cancer Blog:

• Abraxane and Xeloda combination for metastatic breast cancer
• Is surgery enough if you are diagnosed with high grade DCIS?
• More chemotherapy could improve survival for those diagnosed with Stage IIIB breast cancer
• HRT use drops breast cancer rates drop
• Different perspective on drop in breast cancer cases
• Dose-dense chemotherapy better for breast cancer
• Tamoxifen reduces the risk of developing cancer for years following treatment
• Dr. Susan Love blogs breaking news in breast cancer research
• Gene assay accurately predicts estrogen receptors in breast cancer
• House mouse virus linked to breast cancer
• Breast cancer chemo cocktail called inferior

Results published at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, said that Abraxane in combination with Xeloda may be an effective treatment option for patients with metastatic breast cancer.

Abraxane is a newer form of Taxol that uses albumin, a natural protein found in the body, to deliver high concentrations of the active ingredient into the cancer cells and has fewer side effect than Taxol. Abraxane treatments last around 30 minutes compared with 3 hours for Taxol.

Researchers conducted a small clinical trial that included 38 patients with metastatic breast cancer. Complete disappearance of cancer was achieved in nearly 9 percent of patients. Partial responses were achieved in about 44 percent of patients. Disease stabilization was seen in almost 33 percent of study participants.

Even though the study was a small one, researchers conclude that it appears that treatment with Abraxane and Xeloda may be effective for patients with metastatic breast cancer.

Oncotype DX is a diagnostic test that quantifies the likelihood of disease recurrence in women with early stage, node negative breast cancer. With the information provided by the test it may be possible for doctors and patients to make more informed decisions about breast cancer treatment options.

Oncotype DX analyzes a specific set of genes within a tumor to determine a recurrence score. The recurrence score is a number between 0 and 100 that corresponds to the likelihood that a recurrence with happen within 10 years of initial diagnosis.

Results presented at the 2006 annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) stated that the Oncotype DX test can more accurately predict estrogen receptor (ER) status than the two other commonly used tests, immunohistochemistry and ligand binding.

Another Oncotype DX study presented at the SABCS said that the test could predict the response to Tamoxifen by the levels of estrogen expression.

The researchers concluded that ER and PR expression, as measured using the Oncotype DX test, provide different pieces of information about prognosis and likely response to Tamoxifen among patients with node-negative breast cancer.

Among all sorts of news circulating as a result of the recent breast cancer conference in San Antonio, Texas is a report about an international study that has many touting Canadian chemotherapy treatments as the best therapies around -- even better than the commonly-used AC/T cocktail (doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide followed by paclitaxel) .

The winning Canadian drug combinations -- EC/T (epirubicin and cyclophosphamide followed by paclitaxel) and CEF (cyclophosphamide, epirubicin, and fluorouracil) -- are reportedly more effective at preventing breast cancer recurrence than AC/T.

About 2,104 women in Canada and the United States participated in this international study. All had undergone surgery to remove a tumor and were receiving chemotherapy. The women, aged 60 and under, all had cancer that had spread to their lymph nodes, indicating the disease was likely to spread.

The women received one of three treatments -- AC/T, EC/T, or CEF -- and results revealed that for every 100 women who received EC/T or CEF, 10 women would suffer a recurrence. For every 100 women who received AC/T, 15 women would relapse.

The lead researcher of the study says it's too soon to say whether EC/T and CEF are more effective in the long-term. So participants will be followed for some time while researchers will try to make sense of their initial findings. In the meantime, they suspect AC/T will continue to be widely used because of its lesser side effects.

There may be another explanation for the recently announced decline in breast cancer rates. And it's not nearly as promising as the first explanation may be.

A day after researchers announced that the significant drop in breast cancer cases is primarily due to fewer women using hormone replacement therapy (HRT), some experts suggest breast cancer rates are not dropping at all. Just as many women may have breast cancer, they say. They just aren't being screened for it.

"We have been aware for several years that the number of radiologists who specialize in mammography have been decreasing, and that there are places in the United States where women have difficulty getting access to mammography," Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, wrote on the society's blog just after the public announcement.

"If mammography use has reached a peak and is now decreasing, we may actually be diagnosing fewer cancers when they can be most effectively treated, Lichtenfeld said. "If you don't get a mammogram, you don't diagnose a cancer."

The research linking the decline in HRT to the drop in breast cancer came from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and was discussed at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio on Thursday. The research, based on a report by the National Cancer Institute, showed a seven percent drop in new breast cancer cases between July 2002 and August 2003, corresponding with the results of a 2002 Women's Health Initiative study.

With media reports citing HRT as the direct cause of the drop, some worry the public is getting the wrong message -- specifically women still taking hormones or those who have taken them in the past. While women not taking hormones are breathing a sigh of relief, others are in a panic.

Dr. Katherine Sherif, director of the Drexel Center for Women's Health at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, has spoken already with 15 patients worried about this news.

"What I have told them is that three years is too short of a time to measure the effects of a drug on breast cancer," she said. "Cancers take decades to develop, and conversely, withdrawing hormones could not result in a decrease in breast cancer in three years -- it's actually absurdly short." There are also concerns women will experience anxiety about other therapies using estrogen, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).

The study on HRT and breast cancer may be raising more questions than answers -- which could be a good thing. More questions prompt more investigation, more study, more research. And this will hopefully help us figure out one facet of the mystery of breast cancer.

Previous posts on the topic of HRT and breast cancer are as follows.

• HRT use drops breast cancer rates drop
• Hooray for HRT!?
• HRT and smoking dramatically increases breast cancer risk
• HRT increases breast cancer risks

Husband and wife team -- Dr. Tyler Curiel and Dr. Ruth Berggren -- prepare to relocate to San Antonio, Texas and will leave behind the city torn apart by Hurricane Katrina -- the same city where they worked tirelessly in 100-plus degree heat to rescue frozen cells and tissue from destruction during a storm that destroyed nearly everything in its path. They worked for one week caring for trapped patients at the inner city Charity Hospital, using diminishing generator power and the very basic of supplies. And they worked by flashlight to preserve their temperature-sensitive cells -- the cells that made up most of their life's work. They were successful in their mission -- and happily saved the cells of one of Curiel's medical students who once worked in his lab but died in 2004 of a rare cancer.

In September, the duo will leave New Orleans and will begin work at a nationally recognized cancer center -- the San Antonio Cancer Institue. Curiel will share his expertise in gynecological cancers -- specifically ovarian cancer -- and Berggren will join the health science center as an infectious disease specialist.