STF during neadjuvant chemotherapy aiming to improve the chemotherapy efficacy and decline the side effects in patients with stage II-III HR+, HER2- breast cancer
In preclinical research, short-term fasting (STF) protects tumor-bearing mice against the toxic effects of chemotherapy, improves the CD8+ effector T-cell intratumor infiltration, while enhancing the chemotherapy efficacy. Short-term use of a fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) caused a major increase in the efficacy of cancer treatment in mice comparable to STF. In humans, the investigators recently performed a multicenter randomized phase II trial showing that patients with Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2 (HER2) negative breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and FMD displayed a better radiological response and a better pathological response (90-100% vs <90% tumor cell reduction) than patients treated with chemotherapy without FMD (de Groot, Nat Commun 2020; NCT02126449). Therefore these findings will be validated in a phase 3 trial with the underlying hypothesis that FMD during neoadjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer improves clinical outcomes, potentially due to improved local immunity.