Breast Cancer

Martine Piccart, MD, PhD, discusses the implications of the HERA trial, which looked at two years compared with one year of trastuzumab after adjuvant chemotherapy in women with HER2-positive breast cancer.

As the genomic era in oncology unfolds, the development of new therapeutics increasingly will involve targeting a range of mutations simultaneously, requiring a "next-generation clinical trials system" to match the advances that technology is delivering.

Two large clinical trials are expected to define the impact that employing genomic tests in treatment decisions has on survival outcomes, according to Martine J. Piccart, MD, PhD.

Oncology leaders are bracing for a host of changes in the healthcare system, not only as a result of the recently upheld insurance reform legislation but also because of continued pressure to control the ever-rising cost of cancer care.

Lisa A. Carey, MD, Professor of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses the field of psycho-oncology.

Ron Bose, MD, PhD, from the Siteman Cancer Center, discusses the prevalence of HER2 gene mutations in patients diagnosed with breast cancer.

Burnout is described as a syndrome of "emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of low personal accomplishment," and is an increasingly problematic condition among physicians for a multitude of reasons.

Hope S. Rugo, MD, at the University of California, San Francisco, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the standard for front-line chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer.

An interview with Debu Tripathy, MD, summarizing noteworthy results from the 2012 ASCO Annual Meeting and SABCS, including clinical studies in local, adjuvant, and metastatic breast cancer therapies.

Richard Finn, MD, from Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the rationale for targeting cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 with the novel agent PD 0332991 in breast cancer.

Johanna Bendell, MD, Director of GI Cancer Research Program, Associate Director, Drug Development Program, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses the inhibition of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) in advanced solid tumors.

Justin M. Balko, PharmD, PhD, from the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, describes a study that discovered JAK2 alterations in patients with treatment-refractory triple-negative breast cancer.

Linda T. Vahdat, MD, from the Weill Cornell Medical College, discusses the combination of eribulin mesylate and trastuzumab as a first-line therapy for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

The FDA has approved ado-trastuzumab emtansine, also known as T-DM1, for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

Genetic or drug-induced alterations of the enzyme CYP2D6 that result in reduced metabolism of tamoxifen are associated with a higher risk of recurrence and death in women with ER–positive breast cancer who receive the drug.

Christopher Twelves, MD, Professor and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology, University of Leeds, highlights key findings from the 2012 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, which took place in December 2012.

William J. Gradishar, MD, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, describes the need to enrich the patient population in a clinical trial that is investigating a novel targeted therapy.

Edith A. Perez, MD, from the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, discusses the antibody-drug conjugate T-DM1 that is being investigated as a treatment for patients with HER2-positive, unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.

Debu Tripathy, MD, from the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses results from the ATLAS trial that compared 5 years of adjuvant tamoxifen to 10 in patients with estrogen receptor-positive early breast cancer.

Leyland-Jones, MB BS, PhD, a renowned oncologist and translational scientist, has helped develop several mainstay oncologic treatments and the targeted breast cancer therapy trastuzumab.

William J. Gradishar, MD, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, describes results from the 301 Study that compared eribulin mesylate to capecitabine for locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.

Peter A. Kaufman, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, discusses the side effect profiles of the microtubule inhibitor eribulin mesylate and the oral chemotherapeutic agent capecitabine.

In interviews with OncologyLive, Debu Tripathy, MD, and William Gradishar, MD, discussed their views of the most important abstracts presented during the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Eleftherios (Terry) P. Mamounas, MD, MPH, from the Aultman Hospital Cancer Center, discusses the controversial topic of surgery for patients who present with stage IV breast cancer at the time of diagnosis.

Patients with breast cancer who do not exhibit amplifications of the HER2 gene may still have mutations of HER2 that drive the progression of their cancer, suggesting that these mutations could serve as therapeutic targets.