San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

Data from a 29-practice consortium shows that oncologists tend to under-recognize substantial symptoms among patients with breast cancer receiving radiotherapy after they have undergone a lumpectomy, according to a presentation during the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. The data underscore a need for improvement in symptom detection.

Invasive disease-free survival was prolonged in patients with high-risk, early hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer treated with abemaciclib in combination with standard endocrine therapy in the phase 3 monarchE trial, according to a presentation at the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Five-year invasive disease-free survival and overall survival were improved with the addition of chemotherapy to endocrine therapy as treatment of premenopausal, but not postmenopausal, women with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, lymph node–positive breast cancer and a recurrence score between 0 and 25.

Adam M. Brufsky, MD, PhD, FACP, discusses the TBCRC049 trial, which looks at the safety and efficacy of the tucatinib/trastuzumab/capecitabine combination to treat leptomeningeal metastases in HER2-positive breast cancer.

In a 500-patient randomized trial, the pharmacokinetics, clinical activity, and safety of pertuzumab and trastuzumab administered as a subcutaneous fixed-dose combination were found to be noninferior to the intravenous versions of the drugs.

A pathologic complete response rate of 44% was observed with a neoadjuvant durvalumab (Imfinzi)-based regimen administered to patients with triple-negative breast cancer, according to results of a phase I/II study presented in a poster at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, discusses the results of the monarcHER trial, which examined adding the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib and endocrine therapy to trastuzumab versus trastuzumab plus chemotherapy in advanced hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive breast cancer.

Nearly 12 years after discontinuing treatment, anastrozole, an aromatase inhibitor, maintained a preventive effect for postmenopausal women at high risk for breast cancer. Women assigned to anastrozole were 49% less likely to have developed breast cancer compared with women assigned to placebom according to data presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Preliminary results from the phase III NeoTRIPaPDL1 Michelangelo study showed that the addition of atezolizumab to combination carboplatin plus nab-paclitaxel did not result in a statistically significant increase in the pathologic complete response rate compared with the combination alone in patients with early high-risk and locally advanced triple-negative breast cancer.

According to a pooled analysis of neoadjuvant trials presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, a pathologic complete response to HER2-directed neoadjuvant therapy reduced the risk of recurrence in patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer but did not eliminate it, supporting the common practice of continued anti-HER2 therapy.

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

The addition of pembrolizumab to standard-of-care chemotherapy for neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment of early triple-negative breast cancer lead to higher rates of pathologic complete responses in the KEYNOTE-522 trial, especially in those patients with stage III and/or node-positive disease.

Frontline treatment with palbociclib demonstrated positive progression-free survival n real-world patients with HR-positive/HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer and may lead to an overall survival benefit , according to data from the pivotal PALOMA-2 trial.

High rates of disease control were reported in the first set of results from a randomized trial in which adjuvant T-DM1 was compared to  trastuzumab and paclitaxel for the treatment of patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer.

Rita Nanda, MD, discusses the IMpower130 trial in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who express PD-L1.

Patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer who had received prior anti-HER2 therapies continued to experience a progression-free survival benefit with margetuximab and a trend toward overall survival compared with trastuzumab when either agent was combined with chemotherapy, according to updated findings from the phase III SOPHIA trial. 

In the phase III APHINITY trial, pertuzumab with trastuzumab plus chemotherapy demonstrated a 0.9% improvement in overall survival and continued to reduce the risk of disease recurrence in patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer in the adjuvant setting, according to a 6-year analysis of the phase III APHINITY trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

In the phase II HER2CLIMB trial, a 34% reduction in the risk of death was observed with the addition of tucatinib to the combination of trastuzumab and capecitabine in patients with heavily pretreated unresectable locally advanced or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer compared to the combination alone, according to results from the phase II HER2CLIMB trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Japanese patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer had a significant improvement in invasive disease-free survival with the addition of the novel oral fluoropyrimidine derivative S-1, according to findings from the phase III POTENT trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

In heavily pretreated patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, trastuzumab deruxtecan induced a confirmed objective response rate of almost 61% and a durable benefit, according to results from the phase II DESTINY-Breast01 trial presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Based on data from the phase III TAM-01 trial presented at the 41st Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, investigators concluded that giving women diagnosed with breast intraepithelial neoplasia a lower dose of tamoxifen following surgery could be as effective and less toxic than the current standard dose.

Charles E. Geyer, Jr, MD, professor of medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, associate director for clinical research and Harrigan, Haw, Luck Families Chair in Cancer Research at Massey Cancer Center, discusses the impact of pertuzumab (Perjeta) in the treatment of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

At the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, data demonstrated that use of circulating tumor-cell counts had strong value for selecting endocrine therapy compared to chemotherapy in patients with estrogen receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.

Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, director of the Breast Oncology Program, medical director of the Clinical Research Unit, University of California, Los Angeles Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses response to abemaciclib (Verzenio) in the neoMONARCH trial at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

A biomarker subgroup analysis of the phase III IMpassion130 study in patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer or inoperable locally advanced TNBC found that progression-free survival and overall survival improvements with the addition of first-line atezolizumab  to nab-paclitaxel were exclusive to patients with PD-L1 expression ≥1% in immune cells.

Patients with triple-negative breast cancer who received chemotherapy treatment more than 30 days after surgery had worse survival rates and outcomes than patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy within 30 days of surgery, according to findings from a retrospective study presented at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Roberto A. Leon Ferre, MD, oncologist, Mayo Clinic, discusses the identification of patients with luminal androgen receptor (LAR) triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) during the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Adding adjuvant capecitabine to the standard treatment for patients with early-stage triple-negative breast cancer did not lead to a significant improvement in disease-free or overall survival compared with observation, according to findings presented during the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

Patients with breast cancer who achieved pathologic complete response following neoadjuvant chemotherapy were more likely to have improved survival outcomes, according to findings of a meta-analyses data presented at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Findings from the phase III KATHERINE study showed adjuvant treatment with ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1; Kadcyla) reduced the risk of invasive disease recurrence or death by 50% compared with trastuzumab (Herceptin) in patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer who had residual invasive disease following neoadjuvant therapy.