Breast Cancer

Neelima Vidula, MD, highlights some of the pivotal trials evaluating immunotherapy combination regimens in triple-negative breast cancer, some of the challenges faced in practice, and areas for further exploration.

Lajos Pusztai, MD, DPhil, discusses the role of circulating tumor DNA as a biomarker of response in patients with high-risk early-stage breast cancer.

December 14, 2020 - The combination of neratinib and capecitabine showed a 34% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death compared with lapatinib and capecitabine in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who had central nervous system metastases at baseline.

Erika P. Hamilton, MD, discusses the mechanism of action of OP-1250 in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.

Nadia Harbeck, MD, PhD, discusses Ki-67 as a biomarker for identifying patients with high-risk early breast cancer who received treatment on the monarchE trial.

December 11, 2020 - Tucatinib in combination with trastuzumab and capecitabine significantly prolonged the time to deterioration of health-related quality of life in patients with HER2- positive metastatic breast cancer with brain metastases.

December 11, 2020 - The addition of 1 year of palbociclib to endocrine therapy failed to improve invasive disease-free survival in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer who are at high risk of relapse following neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

The clinical tool RSClin™, which integrates the 21-gene expression assay and clinical pathologic features, was shown to provide more prognostic information than the 21-gene recurrence score or clinical pathologic features alone and a more precise prediction of absolute chemotherapy benefit in node-negative early breast cancer.

December 11, 2020 - Gastrointestinal adverse events that occurred in patients with metastatic breast cancer who were treated with oral paclitaxel and encequidar can be managed by the use of 5- HT3 inhibitors and early intervention with loperamide.

December 11, 2020 - Sacituzumab govitecan increased response rates and improved progression-free survival vs chemotherapy in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer with stable brain metastases, although no overall survival improvement was observed.

December 11, 2020 - The presence of circulating tumor DNA following neoadjuvant chemotherapy with or without pembrolizumab was a biomarker for response and distant recurrence-free survival in patients with high-risk early-stage breast cancer.

December 11, 2020 - Patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative, hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer who were treated with tesetaxel and a reduced dose of capecitabine experienced improvements in progression-free survival compared with those treated with the FDA-approved dose of capecitabine alone.

December 11, 2020 - The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has granted a positive opinion to tucatinib in combination with trastuzumab and capecitabine for use in adult patients with HER2-positive, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer who had received at least 2 previous anti-HER2 therapies.

December 11, 2020 - The combination of plinabulin and pegfilgrastim was 53% more effective in reducing the incidence of profound neutropenia compared with pegfilgrastim alone in patients undergoing chemotherapy, according to full findings of the phase 3 PROTECTIVE-2 trial.

December 11, 2020 - Use of a novel HER2 quantitative continuous score was better able to provide an objective and quantitative assessment of HER2 expression to identify patients who are most likely to respond to fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki.

December 10, 2020 - The GP2 immunotherapy plus granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor demonstrated potent responses and a 100% disease-free survival in patients with HER2/neu 3–positive disease who received adjuvant trastuzumab.

December 10, 2020 - Amcenestrant elicited antitumor activity in heavily pretreated, postmenopausal women with advanced or metastatic estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer.

December 10, 2020 - The addition of neoadjuvant atezolizumab to nab-paclitaxel followed by doxorubicin plus cyclophosphamide was found to improve pathologic complete responses compared with placebo plus chemotherapy in patients with early triple-negative breast cancer without adding additional treatment burden to patients.

Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, discusses the safety profile of SAR439859 in estrogen receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.

Debu Tripathy, MD, discusses updated results of the phase 3 MONALEESA-7 trial in hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer.

In our exclusive interview, Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, sheds light on the considerations that should be made leading up to treatment selection in common clinical scenarios in breast cancer.

December 10, 2020 - The antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan was found to induce clinical benefit over physician’s choice of therapy in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, irrespective of Trop-2 expression; however, greater efficacy was observed in those who had a medium or high Trop-2 score.

December 10, 2020 - Frontline pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy for advanced triple-negative breast cancer demonstrated efficacy across key patient subgroups, including those with PD-L1 expression by combined positive score.

December 10, 2020 — The combination of ipatasertib and paclitaxel failed to show a significant improvement in progression-free survival vs placebo plus paclitaxel in patients with PIK3CA/AKT1/PTEN-altered locally advanced, unresectable or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

December 10, 2020 - Favorable outcomes after treatment with the HER2-directed lapatinib were indicated by early declines in circulating tumor cell counts in patients with metastatic breast cancer who initially had HER2-negative primary tumors but positive HER2 CTCs.