Nicholas C. Turner, MD, PhD, of The Royal Marsden Hospital NHS Trust, discusses the challenges of treating metastatic breast cancer and how liquid biopsies can serve as a guide to genetic phenotypes.
Richard G. Gray, MSc, of the University of Oxford, discusses an Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group meta-analysis of 21,000 women in 16 randomized trials, which showed that increasing the dose density of adjuvant chemotherapy by shortening intervals between courses or sequentially administering treatment significantly reduces disease recurrence and breast cancer mortality (Abstract GS1-01).
Vered Stearns, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, and Prudence A. Francis, MD, of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, discuss two key topics in adjuvant treatment: endocrine therapy for premenopausal women with ER+ breast cancer and finding the optimal duration of treatment.
Richard Pazdur, MD, of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s Oncology Center of Excellence, discusses the rapid changes in evaluating and approving new and effective agents, incorporating the view of patients in the process, and modernizing clinical trial design with broader eligibility criteria.
Louis Fehrenbacher, MD, of Kaiser Permanente, discusses study findings comparing adjuvant chemotherapy with doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide followed by weekly paclitaxel—or docetaxel and cyclophosphamide—with or without a year of trastuzumab in women with node-positive or high-risk node-negative disease (Abstract GS1-02).
Eric S. Winer, MD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, addresses the much-discussed controversy over whether all women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer should undergo next-generation sequencing.
