REVIEW article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Breast Cancer
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancement of Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer: Predictive Markers, Resistance Mechanism and Therapeutic StrategiesView all 15 articles
Research Progress on Selective Estrogen Receptor Degraders in the Treatment of Advanced Breast Cancer
Provisionally accepted
- Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities, Baise, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Hormone receptor-positive (HR+) breast cancer accounts for the majority of breast cancer cases and is primarily treated with endocrine therapy (ET). While traditional agents such as tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors, and fulvestrant have significantly improved patient outcomes, the emergence of resistance—particularly in patients harboring ESR1 mutations—remains a major clinical challenge. Recent advances in oral selective estrogen receptor degraders (SERDs), including elacestrant, camizestrant, giredestrant, and imlunestrant, have demonstrated improved bioavailability, effective ER degradation, and favorable tolerability profiles. Furthermore, combination strategies integrating CDK4/6 or mTOR inhibitors have shown enhanced clinical efficacy, particularly in ET-resistant populations. This narrative review summarizes the pharmacological characteristics, clinical trial outcomes, and ongoing research on these next-generation oral SERDs, and discusses potential strategies for overcoming resistance and optimizing therapeutic sequencing. Insights from these developments may guide precision treatment and improve outcomes for patients with advanced HR+ breast cancer.
Keywords: Advanced breast cancer, Endocrine therapy, estrogen receptorsignaling, fulvestrant, oral selective estrogen receptor degraders (SERDs)
Received: 25 Nov 2025; Accepted: 16 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 韦, Zheng, Wang, Lin, Huang and Peng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Qiuhuan Huang
Hao Peng
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.