Change of PR status from affecting breast cancer aggressiveness

mhalsakn

Hello,I want to share my experience and what we passed through in my wife journey fighting breast cancer from 2013 to 2017. May her soul RIP. Because of my work in oncology in pharmaceutical industry for more than 10 years, I looked into many articles mentioning how Progesterone receptors act by applying the brakes to Estrogen receptors minimizing tumor growth rate. I seen this in my wife MBC, after hormonal tumor mutated from PR+VE into PR-VE how it changes from a slow growing cancer controlled by Tamoxifen for 3.5 years into a very aggressive type that took my wife life in just 8 months. I also believe the other factors affecting tumor aggressiveness are high grade of proliferation of tumor cells (Ki67) which was very high in my wife >80% and young age (20-40) . My wife was initially diagnosed at 35, and had metastatic at age of 39. All these factors resulted in poor prognosis. Hormonal agents were ineffective. Tamoxifen, Faslodex, Femara. Name it. Only Chemo worked. Our oncologist assured us when cancer came back in Dec 2016 that the driver is Estrogen and although the Progesterone receptor is lost since the initial diagnosis in 2013, they rely on Estrogen and nothing to worry about, but the way cancer behaved was so much differently after in coming months than initial diagnosis and we can see it was very aggressive. Liver progression and bone mets were spreading, disappear with chemo (MRI , CT scans show clearance of mets) then month after, all mets will come back more than before. Cisplatin,low dose Xeloda did not have enough time to work, cancer was progressing rapidly in liver lead to liver failure then kidney failure then Septic shock and complete heart shutdown. The link below is from the resources that I found related to change in PR status:

http://www.cancernetwork.com/breast-cancer/uncover...