HER2+ Breast Cancer

One-third of patients previously identified as having HER2-positive breast cancer were found to also have a luminal subtype that was resistant to chemotherapy and trastuzumab but still sensitive to the triplet neoadjuvant regimen of pertuzumab, trastuzumab, and chemotherapy.

Mothaffar Rimawi, MD, discusses key recent data with HER2-targeted agents and the need to identify patients for whom optimal care may mean de-escalating therapy.

Kimberly L. Blackwell, MD, professor of Medicine, assistant professor of Radiation Oncology, Duke Cancer Institute, discusses the mechanism of action for margetuximab (MGAH22-01) and discusses its potential as a treatment of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

Grade 3 diarrhea occurred in 16% of patients treated with neratinib and prophylactic loperamide, representing a significant reduction compared with phase III findings from the ExteNET trial.

Safety data from clinical trials suggest that a prophylactic regimen reduces both the severity and duration of neratinib-associated diarrhea.

Gargi D. Basu, PhD, senior director of Clinical Curation, Ashion Analytics, discusses a study that examined alterations in the cell cycle checkpoint pathway in patients with breast cancer.

The oral pan-HER TKI neratinib continued to show similar rates of disease-free survival for patients with HER2-positive early-stage breast cancer at a 3-year analysis of the phase III ExteNET trial.

T-DM1 (ado-trastuzumab emtansine; Kadcyla) reduced the risk of death by 32% and improved median overall surviva by almost 7 months compared with physician's choice of therapy in heavily pretreated patients with HER2-positive advanced breast cancer.

Hans-Christian Kolberg, MD, doctor of Medicine, Marien Hospital Bottrop in Bottrop, Germany, discusses the cost-effectiveness of pertuzumab as a treatment for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer, based off of findings from a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Gunter von Minckwitz, MD, discusses less-than-encouraging results and what next steps lie ahead in neoadjuvant therapy regimens for HER2-positive breast cancer.

Pat Whitworth, MD, medical oncologist at the Nashville Breast Center, discusses the prospective neo-adjuvant NBRST study, which looked at BluePrint functional subtyping versus conventional immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) in breast tumors.

Prophylactic administration of standard heart failure medications helped preserve left ventricular ejection fraction in patients treated with trastuzumab for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

Clifford Hudis, MD, discusses the evolving adjuvant therapy options in HER2-positive breast cancer.

Not all HER2 genes are capable of causing cancer growth or spread, and thus may also fail to predict response to anticancer drugs that target the gene.

Mohammad Jahanzeb, MD, discusses emerging strategies in the adjuvant treatment of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

The primary analysis of the phase III CALGB 40601 trial found that pathologic complete response to dual HER2 blockade was not statistically higher than anti-HER2 monotherapy. However, there was a high level of intertumoral heterogeneity, and patients with the HER2-enriched subtype had a high pCR with both single and dual anti-HER2 therapy.

Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, chief, Breast Cancer Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, professor of medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, takes a deeper look at neoadjuvant treatment for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

Hans-Christian Kolberg, MD, discusses updated results from a study that showed that neoadjuvant chemotherapy with docetaxel, carboplatin, and weekly trastuzumab demonstrated significant overall survival and disease-free survival activity in patients with HER2-positive early-stage breast cancer.

Kimberly L. Blackwell, MD, discusses the potential for some emerging therapies, as well as the benefits of current treatments for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

Patients with hormone receptor (HR)–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer who have a favorable gene-expression profile may be able to avert chemotherapy and receive endocrine treatment alone.

Mohammad Jahanzeb, MD, discusses therapeutic agents that may fit into the adjuvant setting treatment paradigm for HER2-positive breast cancer, the increasing importance of genomic testing, and individualized treatments as multiple agents emerge.