Breast cancer prevention drugs show additional health benefits

The result from the Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene (STAR) trial, one of the largest breast cancer prevention clinical trials ever conducted, provide a good opportunity to look back at the obstacles and successes in the development of these two drugs, according to a commentary by V. Craig Jordan, Ph.D., D.Sc., of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. He discusses the discovery and development of these two drugs, their benefits outside breast cancer prevention, such as treating osteoporosis, and a glimpse into future research.

Both tamoxifen and raloxifene belong to a class of drugs known as selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs), which have been shown in clinical trials to successfully prevent breast cancer. These drugs act by occupying estrogen receptors in breast and other tissue, and therefore block estrogen's message to the cell to divide and spread.

While the STAR trial demonstrated that development of new chemoprevention drugs is a slow, often unpredictable, process, chemoprevention must remain a priority, Jordan says. Both tamoxifen and raloxifene have been highly effective at reducing the incidence of breast cancer and in the case of tamoxifen, the death rates when used to treat breast cancer. Nevertheless, it's important that research continue in order to develop new prevention options, specifically cost-effective treatments that are intended for premenopausal women.

"For the moment, raloxifene is proving to be an important advance in chemoprevention because it is a multifunctional medicine that can target women at low risk for breast cancer with [low bone mineral density] and healthy women with a high risk of breast cancer. Nevertheless, new SERMs are necessary for clinical testing in postmenopausal women. The SERM concept clearly works, but a long-acting SERM is required to replace raloxifene, a drug that does not appear to perform optimally in a high-estrogen environment," Jordan writes.

Source: www.epsdrugstore.com