Conditions: Breast Neoplasms Breast Cancer Cancer of the Breast
Keywords: Breast cancer Tumors, Breast Cancer of the breast
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 23
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to assess if docetaxel and cytoxan can shrink the size of your breast tumor and allow you to preserve your breast or have less extensive surgery on your breast. Additionally, by receiving chemotherapy before surgery, the investigators will be able to determine if your cancer is responsive to chemotherapy.

Detailed description:
Previous studies have shown that chemotherapy has the same effect on treating breast cancer whether you receive it before or after surgery. Receiving chemotherapy before surgery, rather than after surgery, may allow you to have less extensive surgery by shrinking the size of your cancer. The purpose of this study is to assess if docetaxel and cytoxan can shrink the size of your breast tumor and allow you to preserve your breast or have less extensive surgery on your breast. Additionally, by receiving chemotherapy before surgery, we will be able to determine if your cancer is responsive to chemotherapy. Prior to entering this study, a special test, called the Oncotype DX assay, will be performed on a small amount of your cancer from the biopsy you had at the time you were diagnosed with breast cancer, to determine the likelihood that your cancer will benefit from and shrink with chemotherapy. You will only be eligible to enter this study if the recurrence score determined using the Oncotype DX assay is 25 or greater. Patients with hormone receptor-positive breast cancers with recurrence scores greater than or equal to 25 have been previously demonstrated to obtain a significant benefit from chemotherapy given after surgery.

In addition, researchers would like to examine proteins present in your blood and proteins present in your breast tissue. These additional parts of the study are voluntary and are NOT required to participate in this study.

Arms:
arm 1: Patients will be treated with docetaxel at 75 mg/m² concomitantly with cytoxan 600 mg/m² (TC) IV D1 every 3 weeks for 6 cycles. Due to known toxicity of docetaxel, all patients require dexamethasone 4 mg twice daily (BID) PO for 3 consecutive days starting 12-24 hours prior to each dose of docetaxel to minimize hypersensitivity reactions and fluid retention.

Interventions: intervention 1: Docetaxel with Cytoxan intervention 2: Dexamethasone
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Docetaxel 75 mg/m² plus cytoxan 600 mg/m² every 3 weeks for 6 cycles. intervention 2: Dexamethasone 4 mg BID PO for 3 consecutive days starting 12-24 hours prior to each dose of docetaxel.

Protocol document: