Complete response in advanced breast cancer patient treated with a combination of capecitabine, oral vinorelbine and dasatinib

BACKGROUND: Currently, there are no data available on the best choice of treatment in heavily pretreated patients with advanced breast cancer. However, the combination of oral vinorelbine and capecitabine has been demonstrated to be effective and safe in patients with advanced breast cancer pretreated with anthracycline. Furthermore, some studies assessed the activity of dasatinib, an oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor that inhibits five oncogenic tyrosine kinase families, alone or in combination with different chemotherapy in patients affected with advanced breast cancer. CASE PRESENTATION: A patient with metastatic breast cancer, hormone receptor positive and human epidermal grow factor receptor 2 negative, pretreated with epirubicine, taxanes and nab-paclitaxel, was submitted to third line chemotherapy with vinorelbine 60 mg/m(2) on day 1, 8 plus capecitabine 1000 mg/m(2) twice daily from day 1 to day 14 every 21 days. The patient was taking also dasatinib 100 mg once daily for chronic myeloid leukemia. The treatment was well tolerated and, after 15 months, computed tomography scan showed a complete response of liver metastases and bone stable disease. After another 28 months, a 18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography scan showed a metabolic response of bone metastases without other site of disease. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first case in literature about activity of dasatinib in combination with a chemotherapy schedule of oral vinorelbine and capecitabine in advanced breast cancer. This treatment showed both good tolerability and great activity with a long progression free survival of 54 months.