Eribulin in the treatment of advanced breast cancer

Abstract

Despite the improvement in the systemic treatment of recurrent or metastatic breast cancer and availability of hormonal and targeted agents, chemotherapy remains a mainstay of treatment of advanced breast cancer.  Treatment choices for women with advanced breast cancer include several single agents agents and combination regiments. Anthracyclines, taxanes and anti- HER-2 agents, in women with HER-2 positive tumors, are recommended in the initial treatment. For subsequent lines of chemotherapy fluoropyrimidines, gemcytabine, vinorelbine and eribulin are approved in Europe. Eribulin is novel microtubule inhibitor active in a heavily pretreated patients. Phase III clinical trial showed statistically significant improvement of overall survival for eribulin compared to the treatment of physicion’s choice in this population. This article is aimed to present current data regarding eribulin in the management of advanced breast cancer.