Estrogen receptor modulators and estrogen deprivation have become standards of care for hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer. However, after traditional first-line endocrine monotherapy treatment, the disease typically progresses despite the initial high rate of clinical benefit. Multiple studies have aimed at optimizing treatment strategies to improve upon clinical benefit beyond the traditional single-agent endocrine treatment. With the availability of new data and novel therapies, the clinical practice challenge becomes how best to define the optimal treatment sequence to maximize clinical benefit. In this review, we present treatment options clinically relevant to the management of hormone-positive, her2-negative metastatic breast cancer, and we propose a treatment algorithm based on the current literature.
Keywords: Antineoplastic agents; breast neoplasms; combined chemotherapy protocols; drug therapy; hormonal therapy; metastasis.