Ongoing clinical research
Current clinical research has identified MAF as a predictive biomarker for response to bisphosphonates; it could allow identification and selection of women with early-stage breast cancer who could benefit from bisphosphonates in adjuvant treatment.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer for women, and still remains the leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. Most deaths are due to metastatic spread rather than to the primary tumor per se: about 25% of women with breast cancer will present with an advanced stage of disease, with more than 70% of those with bone metastasis. Bone metastasis can be managed but not cured by metastasis-specific drugs; however, diagnosis is often too late for effective management.
A major goal of Inbiomotion is therefore to help prevent metastasis in high-risk patients. As a crucial step, we are working towards early-identification of women with breast cancer who are likely to develop metastatic lesions. In this way, we would help to avoid unnecesary treatment of not-at-risk patients, and avoiding potential adverse effects.
Bisphosphonates, which are bone microenvironment modifying agents, have the theoretical potential to prevent bone metastasis. However, clinical trials studying thousands of high-risk patients have shown inconclusive benefit from their use (Coleman et al., NEJM 2011, Paterson et al., Lancet Oncol 2012, EBCTCG group Lancet 2015). Our recent prospective-retrospective data (Paterson et al., JNCI Cancer Spectrum 2021) demonstrate the clinical benefit of adjuvant treatment of MAF negative breast cancer patients with bisphosphonates. Inbiomotion is addressing the question: did these trials falied by not pre-selecting the correct patients who are at-risk and who would benefit from these treatments?
