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San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

In the first 11 months following the FDA approval of the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib as a single agent and in combination with endocrine therapy for the treatment of hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer, it is being used heterogeneously, including in patients with characteristics indicative of worse prognosis.

Adding the PARP inhibitor olaparib to neoadjuvant platinum based-chemotherapy was determined to be a safe treatment for patients with triple-negative breast cancer, as well as for patients with breast cancer whose tumors harbor germline BRCA mutations.

A pathologic complete response to HER2-directed neoadjuvant therapy reduced the risk of recurrence in early HER2-positive breast cancer but did not eliminate it, supporting the common practice of continued anti-HER2 therapy.

Atezolizumab (Tecentriq) in combination with carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) did not lead to a statistically significant increase in pathologic complete response (pCR) rate compared with carboplatin/nab-paclitaxel alone in patients with early high-risk and locally advanced triple-negative breast cancer,

Maintenance durvalumab may improve outcomes versus chemotherapy in patients with triple-negative breast cancer or those with PD-L1–positive breast cancer across several subtypes, according to exploratory analyses from the phase II randomized SAFIR02-IMMUNO trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Patients with triple-negative breast cancer have greater rates of pathologic complete responses when pembrolizumab is added to neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy. Furthermore, these benefits are observed across patient subgroups, most notably in those patients with stage III and/or node-positive disease.