Surgical resection of liver metastases from breast cancer

The aim of this review is to define the relevance of surgical resection for liver metastasis of breast cancer. We report the rationale for hepatic surgery of liver metastasis, the survival prognosis factors for these patients, and the influence of liver resection on overall survival. The aim of this surgery is not only the local control, but also general control of the disease by preventing the selection of resistant tumor cell clones. Adjuvant therapies remain necessary for general control of the disease. While preoperative detection of small intra hepatic lesions remains difficult, MRI and preoperative ultrasound may help

Gene expression profiling of breast cancer

Molecular types of breast cancer Important differences in the clinical behaviour of oestrogen receptor (ER)-positive and ER-negative cancers have been recognised for a long time [1]. Nevertheless, breast cancer was regarded as a single disease with variable histology and clinical course. More recently, high-throughput analytical methods revealed unexpectedly large-scale molecular differences between ER-positive cancers and ER-negative cancers [2]. These results prompted a conceptual shift in the classification of breast cancer, which is increasingly viewed not as a single disease but as a collection of several biologically distinct neoplastic diseases that arise from the breast epithelium. The different molecular types of breast cancer may originate from different epithelial precursors such as luminal (ERpositive cancers) or basal (ER-negative tumours) epithelia