What Are Lines of Therapy and What You Need to Know
“Lines of therapy” is the term used to describe the order in which different therapies are given to people as their disease progresses.
In practice, doctors may choose a patient’s next line of therapy based on established treatment guidelines, recently published clinical trial results, or even the person’s unique life situation. For clinical trials, lines of therapy — including how many and which therapies were given — are often included in the enrollment requirements. Some trials even study if an already-approved therapy should be given as an earlier line of therapy or a later line of therapy than what is currently recommended.
A related term you may hear is “sequencing”. This term refers to the order in which drugs are given. You can learn more about sequencing in our recent post: What is “Drug Sequencing”?
The following articles define lines of therapy, discuss how each line of therapy is chosen, and explain current MBC treatment guidelines.
- Very Well Health: First-line treatment is the first set of treatments given
- Very Well Health: This article describes first-line treatments for different subtypes of MBC
- Met Up UK: This article and graphics show first-, second-, and third-line treatments for different subtypes of MBC
- Metastatic Trial Talk: Treatment guidelines for MBC