Keywords• bisphosphonates • breast cancer • disseminated tumor cells • osteoblastic niche • parathyroid hormone Breast cancer is the malignancy with the highest incidence in females, and patient clinical outcomes are steadily improving during the last decades. Early detection and advances in adjuvant therapies are the possible explanations for the observed mortality reduction.The rationale for administering adjuvant systemic therapies in women with radically operated breast cancer is to eradicate micrometastases that are supposed to be present at the time of surgery. Disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) from breast cancer and other solid tumors can colonize the bone early during the disease course. DTCs directly compete with hematopoietic stem cells for occupancy of the osteoblastic niches in the bone marrow [1]. Since this niche allows DTCs to evade systemic anticancer therapies, the bone marrow is both a storehouse and a sanctuary for these cells that lay dormant for a considerable period of time before becoming active and able to metastasize to skeletal and extraskeletal sites [1].Cytokines and growth factors derived from the bone microenvironment modulate the activity of DTCs in the osteoblastic niche [2].Bisphosphonates (BPs) are analogs of pyrophosphates that can inhibit osteoclast-mediated bone resorption. As a result, BPs deprive the bone microenvironment of bone-derived growth factors that are required for seeding and growth in the bone marrow [3]. The use of these drugs in patients with early breast cancer may render the bone microenvironment less fertile for metastatic tumor growth and prolong the dormant state of DTCs within their niche.
Evidence of efficacy of BPs in early-stage breast cancerSeveral randomized clinical trials have evaluated the efficacy of BPs administered in adjuvant setting in addition to chemotherapy and endocrine therapy with c onflicting results [3].Whenever the evidence is not definitive, clinical researchers increasingly rely on systematic reviews and meta-analyses to estimate the effect size of a particular treatment in a defined disease setting. Ben-Aharon et al. reported no significant difference in either disease-free survival (DFS) or overall survival (OS) in a pooled analysis of 13 randomized trials evaluating adjuvant BPs (hazard ratio [HR] of DFS: 0.95; 95% CI: 0.81-1.12; HR of OS: 0.89; 95% CI: 0.79-1.01) [4]. This literature-based meta-analysis, however, demonstrated a positive effect on DFS for