Overview
The Duke breast oncology program provides highly specialized care for all types of breast cancer, from the most common type, ductal carcinoma, to more aggressive and rare types of breast cancer such as inflammatory breast cancer, and phyllodes tumors.
Many of our specialists are nationally recognized for their breast cancer expertise. The team’s groundbreaking research has resulted in the FDA approval of breast cancer treatments.
Most recently, research that originated in a Duke Cancer Institute laboratory contributed to the FDA approval of elacestrant, the first new endocrine therapy for breast cancer in more than 20 years. It is the only drug designed to target mutations in estrogen receptor 1 (ESR1).
The new therapy, a selective estrogen receptor down regulator (SERD), was approved by the FDA in January 2023 for the treatment of estrogen receptor-positive/HER2-negative ESR1-mutated advanced or metastatic breast cancer in patients who were not treated successfully with at least one previous endocrine therapy.
