Moving toward precision medicine to predict drug sensitivity in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

Tumor heterogeneity represents a major challenge in breast cancer, being associated with disease progression and treatment resistance. Precision medicine has been extensively applied to dissect tumor heterogeneity and, through a deeper molecular understanding of the disease, to personalize therapeutic strategies. In the last years, technological advances have widely improved the understanding of breast cancer biology and several trials have been developed to translate these new insights into clinical practice, with the ultimate aim of improving patients' outcomes. In the era of molecular oncology, genomics analyses and other methodologies are shaping a new treatment algorithm in breast cancer care. In this manuscript, we review the main steps of precision medicine to predict drug sensitivity in breast cancer from a translational point of view. Genomic developments and their clinical implications are discussed, along with technological advancements that could broaden precision medicine applications. Current achievements are put into perspective to provide an overview of the state-of-art of breast cancer precision oncology as well as to identify future research directions.

Major advancements in metastatic breast cancer treatment: when expanding options means prolonging survival.

In the last years we have witnessed tremendous advancements in the treatment landscape of metastatic breast cancer (MBC), leading to a progressive prolongation of progression-free survival and, in some cases, also of overall survival. This led to a substantial increase of advanced disease treatability. In the present review we comprehensively and critically describe the most significant progresses in the therapeutic scenario of MBC according to BC subtype. In particular, we reviewed studies reporting practice-changing data in hormone receptor-positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative, HER2-positive and triple-negative BC, with also a hint to BRCA-related tumors and the emerging HER2-low-positive category.