Dr. Czerniecki on the Importance of Multidisciplinary Efforts for Breast Cancer Brain/CNS Metastases

Brian Czerniecki, MD, PhD, chair and senior member of the Department of Breast Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses the importance of a multidisciplinary effort to treat patients with breast cancer who develop brain or central nervous system (CNS) metastases.

The treatment metastases, whether they are solid brain tumors or CNS metastases, often takes a collaboration between neurosurgery, with the possibility of the patient being resected; or if the patient is symptomatic, radiation therapy because methods are available to perform radiosurgery; and medical oncology because most of these patients have disease inside and outside of the CNS, says Czerniecki. Targeted therapies may also be beneficial in this population if they are capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier.

For many patients who have CNS disease, their blood-brain barrier becomes somewhat altered or destroyed, which allows some targeted agents and smaller chemotherapy molecules to enter the brain and have an effect, concludes Czerniecki.