Combination Chemotherapy With or Without Capecitabine and/or Trastuzumab Before Surgery in Treating Women With Stage I, Stage II, or Stage III Breast Cancer
RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as epirubicin, cyclophosphamide, docetaxel, and capecitabine, work in different ways to stop the growth of tumor cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Giving more than one drug (combination chemotherapy) may kill more tumor cells. Monoclonal antibodies, such as trastuzumab, can block tumor growth in different ways. Some find tumor cells and kill them or carry tumor-killing substances to them. Others interfere with the ability of tumor cells to grow and spread. Giving combination chemotherapy together with monoclonal antibodies before surgery may make the tumor smaller and reduce the amount of normal tissue that needs to be removed. Giving monoclonal antibodies after surgery may kill any tumor cells that remain after surgery. It is not yet known whether combination chemotherapy is more effective with or without capecitabine and/or trastuzumab in treating breast cancer.
PURPOSE: This randomized phase III trial is studying epirubicin, cyclophosphamide, and docetaxel to compare how well they work with or without capecitabine and/or trastuzumab before surgery in treating women with stage I, stage II, or stage III breast cancer.
Drug: epirubicin hydrochloride
Procedure: adjuvant therapy
Procedure: conventional surgery
Procedure: neoadjuvant therapy
|Study Design:||Allocation: Randomized
Masking: Open Label
Primary Purpose: Treatment
|Official Title:||A Randomized Phase III Study Exploring the Efficacy of Capecitabine Given Concomitantly or in Sequence to EC-Doc With or Without Trastuzumab as Neoadjuvant Treatment of Primary Breast Cancer|
- Pathologic complete response [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
|Study Start Date:||January 2005|
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00288002
|Neu-Isenburg, Germany, D-63263|
|Principal Investigator:||Gunter von Minckwitz, MD||German Breast Group|