Breast Cancer

For more than two decades, Kenneth Offit, MD, MPH, has been researching the molecular genetic factors that increase cancer risk, notably concerning germline BRCA mutations in breast and ovarian cancer, with a focus on potential preventive surgical remedies and screening programs for women at hereditary risk.

Carlos Arteaga, MD, assistant director, Clinical Research, director, Breast Cancer program, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, discusses the PI3K pathway and the role of therapeutic inhibitors in reducing the progression of breast cancer.

Circulating tumor cell (CTC) enumeration is a strong prognostic factor in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) and predicts treatment failure.

Virginia Kaklamani, MD, a professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, discusses a recent clinical trial that looks at the combination of two chemotherapy drugs, carboplatin and eribulin, along with the PARP inhibitor E7449 for the treatment of breast and ovarian cancer.

Researchers will dissect topline results from the MARIANNE trial in the coming weeks in an effort to understand why T-DM1 (ado-trastuzumab emtansine; Kadcyla) failed to triumph as a first-line treatment in the metastatic setting for patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer despite the promise of earlier findings

Two HER2-targeting regimens anchored by T-DM1 (ado-trastuzumab emtansine; Kadcyla) failed to outperform the standard strategy in women with previously untreated advanced HER2-positive breast cancer in the MARIANNE trial, dealing a blow to efforts to move the drug into frontline settings.

Beth Overmoyer, MD, director, Inflammatory Breast Cancer Program, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, speaks on treatment challenges of inflammatory breast cancer.

William J. Gradishar, MD, Betsy Bramsen Professorship of Breast Oncology, Professor in Medicine-Hematology/Oncology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, discusses the BOLERO-1 Trial.

As few as five pounds of weight loss can make a significant difference for patients with triple-negative breast cancer, says Rowan Chlebowski, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

As one of the most significant predictors of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, the BRCA1/2 genes have become the poster child for genetic testing, thrust into the limelight by a high-profile court battle and a celebrity's disclosure.

A 12-gene test for breast cancer recurrence after ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) distinguished high- and intermediate- risk patients from those with a low risk

Findings from a long-term analysis of the Women's Intervention Nutrition Study (WINS) show that the deaths of women with hormone receptor–negative breast cancers were reduced by up to 54% when they followed a program to reduce their dietary fat intake, which could provide benefit for patients with triple-negative breast cancer.

Frontline treatment with everolimus (Afinitor) combined with trastuzumab (Herceptin) and paclitaxel failed to delay disease progression versus trastuzumab and paclitaxel alone in patients with HER2-positive advanced breast cancer

Fulvestrant (Faslodex) improved overall survival (OS) by 5.7 months compared with anastrozole as a frontline treatment for postmenopausal women with HR-positive metastatic breast cancer

Rita Nanda, MD, assistant professor of medicine and associate director of the Breast Medical Oncology Program at the University of Chicago, discusses the potential of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). A recent small-scale trial showed treatment response for 18.5% of patients with PD-L1 positive TNBC.

Older patients with moderate- or high-risk breast cancer had a similar disease-free survival with the bisphosphonate therapy ibandronate alone or in combination with capecitabine.

Five years of tamoxifen continues to offer protection against breast cancer, reducing the risk of breast cancer by 29% in otherwise healthy women at high risk of the disease who have been followed now for 16 to 22 years.

Women with HR+ breast cancer who remained premenopausal after receiving chemotherapy had a lower risk of disease recurrence when adding ovarian suppression to adjuvant exemestane or-to a lesser extent-tamoxifen, compared with standard tamoxifen alone, according to results from the phase III SOFT trial.

The addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) to standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy significantly improved pathologic complete response (pCR) rates in women with basal-like breast cancer compared with non-basal-like subtypes.

Nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) proved markedly more effective than conventional paclitaxel as part of a neoadjuvant regimen for patients with high-risk early breast cancer in a large German study presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.