The potential role of somatostatin analogues in breast cancer treatment.

Existing treatments for breast cancer are helpful for many patients, but treatment failure remains a common event, and there is a strong clinical need to improve upon current therapies. Somatostatin analogues have been evaluated for antineoplastic activity in model systems over the past decade, and encouraging results have been obtained (reviewed in [1, 2]). This has led to suggestions to test these agents clinically in the treatment of breast cancer patients, and a program of clinical trials has recently been initiated. This review will describe aspects of research in this area.