BREAST CANCER

The FDA has approved the marketing of AeroForm, a new system for soft tissue expansion in 2-stage breast reconstruction following mastectomy, and in the treatment of underdeveloped breasts and soft tissue deformities.

The phase II HERMIONE trial was halted after the antibody-drug conjugate MM-302 combined with trastuzumab (Herceptin) failed to improve progression-free survival (PFS) versus chemotherapy plus trastuzumab in patents with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer who had previously received trastuzumab, pertuzumab (Perjeta), and ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1, Kadcyla).

According to results presented during the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, neoadjuvant combination of CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib plus anastrazole may represent a novel therapeutic option for patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative early breast cancer.

The 2017 Miami Breast Cancer Conference, to be held March 9 to 12 at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, welcomes an expanded group of program chairs, and a newly established curriculum committee made up of a multidisciplinary group of breast cancer specialists.

Patients with advanced hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, and visceral metastases obtained a significant benefit from treatment with the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib (LEE011) combined with letrozole, a subgroup analysis of the randomized MONALEESA-2 trial showed.

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) recently recognized 2 renowned researchers for their work in breast cancer during the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

Debu Tripathy, MD, chair of Breast Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the dilemma of managing a patient who has residual disease after receiving neoadjuvant therapy.

BRCA1 methylation or silencing does not predict for a better response to carboplatin over docetaxel in women with advanced triple-negative or BRCA1/2 breast cancer, according to results from a pre-planned biological analysis of the phase III TNT trial.

Continuous low-dose ribociclib shows preliminary activity, and has an acceptable safety profile as an alternative to intermittent ribociclib dosing when combined with fulvestrant in the treatment of postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive, <em>HER2</em>-negative advanced breast cancer.

The combination of pembrolizumab and eribulin demonstrated a 33.3% objective response rate for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who received 0 to 2 prior lines of therapy.

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) continued to show a consistent durable benefit with an additional year of follow-up for heavily pretreated patients with recurrent PD-L1-positive metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Women who are experiencing symptoms of menopause are less likely to adhere to treatment, according to findings presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

The artificial intelligence computer program Watson for Oncology (WFO) achieved a high degree of concordance with tumor board recommendations in a double-blinded validation study in Bengaluru, India, according to results presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

There has been renewed interest in eribulin mesylate (Halaven) following its FDA approval for advanced or unresectable liposarcoma and with the introduction of a growing body of preclinical work suggesting the agent has a novel anti&ndash;mesenchymal mechanism of action.

Recent promising findings with the neoadjuvant combination of the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib with anastrozole could lead to a novel therapeutic option for patients with hormone receptor (HR)&ndash;positive, HER2-negative early breast cancer.

Hyo Sook Han, MD, medical oncologist, Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses results of the phase II BROCADE trial, which evaluated the combination of the PARP inhibitor veliparib with carboplatin/paclitaxel in patients with <em>BRCA</em>-positive breast cancer.

William J. Gradishar, MD, deputy director of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, discusses the takeaways from the TransATAC trial, which was a comprehensive comparison of prognostic signatures in breast cancer.

Aromatase inhibitor (AI) therapy may pose a risk of cardiovascular disease to postmenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer, raising the possibility of a long-term complication in an era of growing survivorship when patients are treated with estrogen-targeting drugs for years.

Findings from the first prospective, randomized clinical trial to evaluate modern scalp-cooling demonstrate that the system is safe and effective in reducing hair loss in women being treated with chemotherapy for their breast cancer, especially for those on taxane-based regimens.

An attempt to strengthen neoadjuvant treatment of patients with locally advanced HR-positive and HER2-positive breast cancer by adding estrogen deprivation therapy to a standard regimen failed to significantly improve response rates.

A biomarker analysis of participants in a phase II breast cancer trial demonstrated potential for identifying tumor markers to predict susceptibility to specific therapies.

Prophylactic treatment with the combination of loperamide and budesonide reduced the rate of grade &ge;3 diarrhea associated with neratinib to 15% compared with 39.9% observed in the ExteNET trial. The rate of all-grade diarrhea was 65% with the prophylactic regimen versus 95.4% in ExteNET, according to findings from the phase II CONTROL trial.

A neoadjuvant regimen combining the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib with anastrozole induced a response rate of 54.7% in patients with HR+/HER2-negative early-stage breast cancer, according to findings from the phase II neoMONARCH trial presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Maura N. Dickler, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses an ongoing clinical trial of the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib combined with the PD-L1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. She also sheds light on abemaciclib&#39;s unique mechanism of action.

Median progression-free survival was improved by 2.1 months with the addition of the pan-PI3K inhibitor buparlisib to fulvestrant for women with HR-positive/HER2-negative advanced breast cancer who received a prior aromatase inhibitor and progressed on or after an mTOR inhibitor.