Docetaxel Followed by Surgery in Treating Women With Stage II or Stage III Breast Cancer

RATIONALE: Dose-dense scheduling with (peg)filgrastim support may improve the clinical and pathologic complete response rate (pCR) and safety profile of single agent neoadjuvant docetaxel therapy. PURPOSE: To evaluate whether dose-dense scheduling with (peg)filgrastim support may improve the clinical and pathologic complete response rate (pCR) and safety profile of single agent neoadjuvant docetaxel therapy. To determine the changes in molecular markers that occurs with single agent docetaxel, tissue will be obtained at the end of the four cycles of docetaxel (either by repeat biopsy or definitive surgery).

OBJECTIVES: Primary * Pathologic complete response rate (pCR) of dose dense docetaxel in the neoadjuvant setting. Secondary * Safety and toxic effects of this regimen in these patients. * Tumor response rate (as measured by ultrasound) in patients treated with this regimen. * Determine whether early changes in markers of cell cycle position, proliferation, or apoptosis correlate with pathologic complete response rate in these patients. * Determine whether the molecular profile that predicts for chemoresponsiveness also predicts for response to radiotherapy (as measured by local recurrence) in these patients. * Determine whether tumors that demonstrate the greatest degree of change in protein expression patterns from pre- to post-docetaxel treatment will also be those that are most sensitive to chemotherapy (as measured by pathologic response rate) in these patients. OUTLINE: This is a nonrandomized, open-label, pilot study. * Tissue Collection: Patients undergo tumor core biopsy (6-8 cores) and blood collection prior to initiating neoadjuvant docetaxel. * Neoadjuvant docetaxel with hematopoietic support: Patients receive docetaxel IV over 1 hour on day 1. Patients also receive pegfilgrastim subcutaneously (SC) on day 1 or 2 of each course OR filgrastim (G-CSF) or sargramostim (GM-CSF) SC daily beginning between day 2-4 of each course and continuing until blood counts recover. Treatment repeats every 14 days for up to 4 courses in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. * Surgery: Within 4-6 weeks after completion of neoadjuvant docetaxel, patients undergo definitive surgery. Patients undergo tumor biopsy and blood collection periodically for pharmacokinetic, genetic, and molecular biomarker correlative studies. Samples are examined for changes in p21 protein expression (and/or p21 phosphorylation) and the protein expression profile. After completion of study treatment, patients are followed at least every 6 months for 3 years and then annually thereafter. PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 50 patients will be accrued for this study.