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The superiority of new generation aromatase inhibitors over tamoxifen in the adjuvant treatment of early breast carcinoma has emerged from several randomized trials. However, until now not all previous studies have shown a mortality benefit.A pooled analysis of 2 prospective multicentric trials, sharing the same study design and nearly identical inclusion criteria, was performed. In both trials, women treated previously with tamoxifen for 2 or 3 years were randomly assigned to either continuing tamoxifen for an additional 2 or 3 years or to having their treatment switched to aminoglutethimide or anastrozole for a comparable time period. Mortality was analyzed according to allocated treatment and other patient and tumor variables.In all, 828 postmenopausal women, mostly with estrogen receptor (ER)‐positive and node‐positive tumors who had been monitored for a median time of 78 months (range, 6–141 months) were analyzed. Of these women, 415 were randomly selected to continue tamoxifen and 413 switched to aminoglutethimide or anastrozole. All‐cause mortality and breast cancer‐specific mortality were significantly improved by the switch: all‐cause mortality: hazard ratio (HR) = 0.61 (0.42–0.88) P = .007; breast cancer‐specific mortality: HR = 0.61 (0.39–0.94) P = .025. No increase was recorded in breast cancer‐unrelated mortality in women after switching. Multivariate analysis showed that patient age, tumor size, allocated treatment, and nodal status, in that order, were independent mortality predictors.Switching to an aromatase inhibitor after 2 or 3 years of tamoxifen therapy significantly improves survival compared with continuing 2 or 3 years of additional tamoxifen treatment. Cancer 2007. © 2007 American Cancer Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary  Tumor response to first-line chemotherapy in advanced breast cancer offers prognostic information and may be used as a surrogate marker for evaluating treatment efficacy. With this study we wanted to determine whether changes in circulating serum CA 15-3 levels during chemotherapy provided additional information for prognostic prediction. Serum CA 15-3 was measured at baseline and after 3 and 6 months during anthracycline-based first-line chemotherapy in 526 patients with advanced breast cancer prospectively enrolled in five phase II-III trials. Changes in marker levels were correlated with disease response, time to progression and overall survival. In all, 336 patients attained a disease response. A significant relationship was found between disease response and CA 15-3 variations, although many individual discrepancies were also observed. At the 6-month time point, the median time to progression was 15.3 months in patients with normal marker levels throughout the study, 11.7 months in those with a CA15-3 reduction >25%, 9.6 months in those with elevated baseline CA 15-3 levels which did not change during therapy and 8.6 months in those with increased marker levels (p < 0.001). The median survival was 42.3, 29.7, 28.5, and 24.8 months, respectively (p < 0.002). The prognostic role of changes in CA 15-3 levels was maintained in the patient subset attaining disease response or stabilization to treatment (p < 0.001) and after adjusting for clinical response and major prognostic parameters in the multivariate analysis (p < 0.001). In conclusion, monitoring serum CA 15-3 levels during first-line chemotherapy in advanced breast cancer patients provides prognostic information independently from tumor response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several mutations in genes involved in Saccharomyces mating type switching may affect the homothallic behaviour in wine yeasts. In this study the semi-homothallic (Hq) segregation of a flor wine yeast strain was analysed. We aimed to understand the molecular basis of this behaviour in a flor autochthonous strain, verifying the MAT locus status by a PCR-based HO gene disruption and sequencing of the Y region of the HML, HMR and MAT loci, after nested PCR. Presence of ORFs a1 and a2 in the Y region of the HML locus was found. At the ORF a2 at HML locus, a mutation in the stop codon was found, so the a2 ORF contains 33 more bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]