• Bevacizumab (Anti–VEGF) Therapy for Breast Cancer: Clinical Outcomes and Therapeutic Challenges
  • Mohammad Amin Dehghani ,1,* Jeiran Haghighi ,2 Fatemeh Dehghani ,3 Khashayar Alikarami ,4
    1. Student Research Committee of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran
    2. School of Pharmacy, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran
    3. Department of Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran
    4. Student Research Committee of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran


  • Introduction: Following the findings that bevacizumab (Anti–VEGF) could approximately augment progression-free survival (PFS) if combined with chemotherapy in comparison with chemotherapy alone in the first-line setting; it has been granted with approval for metastatic breast cancer (BC) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2008. Nevertheless, biomarkers predicting responses to bevacizumab in BC have been still less noticed.
  • Methods: Related literature in English published in the database of PubMed was searched in this study using the keywords of breast cancer, anti-VEGF, bevacizumab, therapeutic challenge, and targeted therapy.
  • Results: The findings revealed that bevacizumab had been considered as the first and the most antiangiogenic agent employed for treating BC in clinical trials. It was also recognized as a recombinant humanized monoclonal antibody impeding interactions between VEGF and its receptors via binding with VEGF ligand. As well, several limitations were observed concerning antiangiogenic therapy. So far, five randomized phase III trials have examined adding bevacizumab to standard chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for HER2-negative metastatic BC. All these investigations have reported improvements in response rates and PFS; nevertheless, they have failed to show an overall survival benefit.
  • Conclusion: While scientific evidence for anti-angiogenics seems to be well-supported, relevant studies have not validated clinically significant benefits of adding such therapeutic agents up until now. Therefore, the use of bevacizumab adjuvant setting was not recommended until a specific marker could be detected to predict patients that were likely to gain enough benefit.
  • Keywords: Breast Cancer, Anti–VEGF, Bevacizumab, Therapeutic Challenge, Targeted Therapy.