Efficacy of Entinostat Monotherapy in Breast Cancer

Evanthia Roussos Torres, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, discusses the efficacy of entinostat in patients with breast cancer.

According to Torres, entinostat monotherapy has mostly been studied in liquid tumors such as leukemias and myelomas. In breast cancer, it has mostly been studied in combination with endocrine therapies and anti-estrogen therapies in order to improve responses to endocrine therapies in patients who were no longer responsive.

The theory is that entinostat would resensitize the tumor microenvironment to estrogen blockade in patients with estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor positive breast cancer. According to Torres, other epigenetic modulating drugs as well as DNMT inhibitors may also sensitive the tumor microenvironment. 

0:08 | The efficacy of entinostat (SNDX-275) monotherapy has been primarily studied in the liquid tumors like leukemias and myeloma. Again, I'm not an expert on entinostat specifically, I don't know for sure what the extent of all of those studies is, but as monotherapy and specifically in breast cancer, it was actually being studied in combination with endocrine therapies, anti-estrogen therapies to try and improve the response to endocrine therapies for patients who were no longer responsive. So, the idea was that entinostat would actually resensitize the tumor microenvironment to estrogen blockade for patients with estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor positive breast cancer. And then multiple other epigenetic modulating drugs as well as the DNMT inhibitors, which are DNA methyl transferase inhibitors have been studied in combination with checkpoint inhibition, not just in breast cancer, but in numerous different types of cancer as part of a way to sensitize the tumor microenvironment checkpoint.