Correia Ana Salomé, Gärtner Fátima, Vale Nuno
OncoPharma Research Group, Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS), Rua Dr. Plácido da Costa, 4200-450 Porto, Portugal.
Department of Molecular Pathology and Immunology, Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar (ICBAS), University of Porto, Rua de Jorge Viterbo Ferreira 228, 4050-313 Porto, Portugal.
Heliyon. 2021 Jan 11;7(1):e05948. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e05948. eCollection 2021 Jan.
Cancer is a set of extremely complex diseases, which are increasingly prominent today, as it affects and kills millions of people worldwide, being the subject of intense study both in its pathophysiology and therapy. Especially in women, breast cancer is still a cancer with a high incidence and mortality. Even though mortality rates for this type of cancer have declined in recent years, it remains challenging at the treatment level, especially the metastatic type. Due to all the impact on health, cancer therapy is the subject of costly and intense research. To enrich this therapy, as well as decrease its underlying high associated costs, drug repurposing and drug combinations are strategies that have been increasingly studied and addressed. As the name implies, drug repurposing presupposes giving new purposes to agents which, in this case, are approved for the therapy of other diseases (for example, cardiovascular or metabolic diseases), but are not approved for cancer therapy. Therefore, a better knowledge of these therapeutic modalities for breast cancer therapy is crucial for improved therapy. In this particular review, we will discuss some relevant aspects of cancer and, particularly, breast cancer and its therapy. Also, drug combination and repurposing will be highlighted, together with relevant examples. Despite some limitations that need to be overcome, these methodologies are extremely important and advantageous in combating several current problems of cancer therapy, namely in terms of costs and resistance to current therapeutic modalities. These approaches will be explored with a special focus on breast cancer.
癌症是一组极其复杂的疾病，如今其日益突出，因为它在全球影响并夺去数百万人的生命，是病理生理学和治疗方面深入研究的对象。尤其是在女性中，乳腺癌仍然是一种发病率和死亡率都很高的癌症。尽管近年来这类癌症的死亡率有所下降，但在治疗层面，尤其是转移性乳腺癌，仍然具有挑战性。鉴于对健康的所有影响，癌症治疗是昂贵且深入研究的主题。为了丰富这种治疗方法，并降低其潜在的高相关成本，药物重新利用和药物联合是越来越受到研究和探讨的策略。顾名思义，药物重新利用预先假定赋予那些在此情况下已被批准用于治疗其他疾病（例如心血管或代谢疾病）但未被批准用于癌症治疗的药物新的用途。因此，更好地了解这些用于乳腺癌治疗的治疗方式对于改善治疗至关重要。在这篇特定的综述中，我们将讨论癌症的一些相关方面，特别是乳腺癌及其治疗。此外，还将重点介绍药物联合和重新利用，并给出相关示例。尽管存在一些需要克服的局限性，但这些方法在应对当前癌症治疗的几个问题，即在成本和对当前治疗方式的耐药性方面，极其重要且具有优势。将特别针对乳腺癌探讨这些方法。
