Alpelisib Efficacy in Advanced Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is one of the popular problems related to the medical field. Breast cancer become more aggressive, and the incidence rate keeps increasing yearly. The incidence indicates the slow progression of the disease. Yearly, there are more than one million new cases that get worse. Probably the incidence rate will increase significantly in the next years. Breast cancer develops silently without medical attention, and most cases are discovered during a routine clinic visit. While other cases may accidentally discover breast lumps, changes in breast shape or size, and nipple discharge. Breast cancer highly affects women worldwide. Mortality rates of breast cancer are improving, but still, the survival rate in the advanced stage is decreasing. Nowadays, Chemotherapy is considered the gold-standard approach for most cancer types and a modest improvement in both survival rates and toxicity reduction. Therefore, this article aims to focus on the use of one of the modest drugs that treat advanced breast cancer, which is Alpelisib, and highlight the mechanism of action, indication, contraindication, pharmacodynamic, pharmacokinetic, dose, and its side effects. Alpelisib is being developed by Novartis company. The first clinical trials started in Oct 2010. It was approved in the USA on May 24th, 2019. Alpelisib works by inhibiting the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) which leads to inhibiting the activation of some signaling pathways. Alpelisib is used in combination with fulvestrant to treat advanced breast cancer in postmenopausal women with some genetic mutations.