A trial looking at dovitinib for breast cancer that has spread

This trial looked at a drug called dovitinib for breast cancer that had spread to another part of the body. The trial was for women who have HER2 negative breast cancer. That means breast cancer that is unlikely to respond to treatment with Herceptin (trastuzumab).

If breast cancer has spread to another part of the body, it is called secondary breast cancer. Doctors can give treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy, but the cancer may get worse. So researchers are looking for ways to help women in this situation.

In this trial, they looked at a drug called dovitinib (also known as TKI258). Dovitinib is a type of biological therapy. It is a cancer growth blocker. It stops signals that cancer cells use to divide and grow.

In some breast cancers, there is a large amount of a protein called fibroblast growth factor receptor 1 or FGFR1. Research in the laboratory had shown that dovitinib could stop cancer cells growing if they had large amounts of FGFR1.

The aims of this trial were to

• See if dovitinib helps women who have secondary breast cancer with either a normal level or a large amount of FGFR1

• Learn more about the side effects