What role do macrophages play in breast cancer?
I have had the privilege to attend many scientific and medical congresses this past year, and my belief from listening to many presentations is that drug development innovation comes from understanding basic biology, then applying this knowledge.
Lisa Coussens (UCSF) at the 2011 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) provided a good example of how scientific knowledge is being translated into medicine and applied to drug development.
In her plenary presentation, she outlined how our understanding of the biology of macrophages and the importance they play in breast cancer may lead to new drug targets. As an example of this, she showed pre-clinical animal work on the Plexxikon drug PLX3397. A human phase 1b/II clinical trial will start in the near future.
As a side note it is worth noting that the NEJM paper published yesterday contains the Stockholm data, not the updated data that will be presented later today that will show further improvement in progression free survival (as compared to placebo) in post menopausal ER+ HER2- women who took everolimus combined with exemestane.