Future Treatment Strategies for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
Closing out his discussion on the management of metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, considers future treatment strategies that may improve outcomes for patients.
Transcript:
Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH: In terms of unmet need for metastatic TNBC with the advent of antibody drug conjugates, immunotherapy, there's been improvement in overall survival. Still, we need further improvement in overall survival. That could be with novel therapies with combination therapies. We need to further move the curve and improve survival for patients with metastatic TNBC. The second is, improvement in the safety profile of these drugs. Being the antibody drug conjugates or immunotherapy that is associated with adverse events, we need safer agents to reduce the adverse events associated with these therapies. Then finally, patients who have brain metastases that continues to be a major unmet need in the field of breast oncology. We need agents that can improve the outcomes of patients with brain metastases.
We reviewed for metastatic TNBC and there's a lot of excitement related to immunotherapy antibody drug conjugates. How about minding both and that is something that is being investigated in clinical trials in the first line setting. Combining these antibody drug conjugates such as sacituzumab andgovitecan with immunotherapy agent like pembrolizumab as first line therapy for metastatic TNBC. We look forward to results of the pivot ascent of four trial, which is evaluating this combination. The other one to consider is combining immunotherapy with PARP inhibitor or combining antibody drug conjugate with PARP inhibitor. There are ongoing studies looking at these combinations. I look forward to seeing the results of those studies.
For providers who are taking care of patients with metastatic TNBC, I would emphasize that triple length their breast cancer is an aggressive sub type of breast cancer. It's important to use the appropriate regiments, immunotherapy, antibody drug conjugates. If you can control the disease well, you can also help with quality of life. Many patients have impaired quality of life because of symptoms related to the disease. For example, pain. If you control the disease, disease control can often offer a good palliation. That's something very important to consider. The other thing to consider for a patient with metastatic TNBC is access to clinical trials. We've seen a lot of advances in the past few years, based on those advances there are newer clinical trials that are looking at combination therapy, newer agents. Providing patients access to the latest drug be it standard of care or in the form of clinical trial is important. Thank you so much for participating today. Listening to my treatment approach for a patient with metastatic TNBC. I hope you found this helpful.
Transcript edited for clarity.
