Peter Schmid, MD, PhD, and Hope S. Rugo, MD, on Breast Cancer: Next Steps in Immunotherapy
2019 ASCO Annual Meeting
Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and Peter Schmid, MD, PhD, of Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, discuss ongoing trials of immunotherapy for early triple-negative breast cancer; immunotherapy in other disease subtypes such as estrogen receptor–positive and HER2-positive; and checkpoint inhibition in PD-L1–negative disease.
Amy J. Davidoff, PhD, of Yale University School of Public Health, discusses study findings on how expanding access to Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) reduced racial disparities among patients with advanced cancer. Before the ACA was implemented in 2014, black patients with cancer were less likely than white patients to receive timely treatment, but in states that did not adopt Medicaid expansion, racial disparities persist (Abstract LBA1).
Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the first study of ribociclib plus endocrine therapy vs endocrine therapy alone to demonstrate significantly longer overall survival in peri- and premenopausal women with advanced breast cancer (Abstract LBA1008).
Jonathan E. Rosenberg, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses results from the phase III Alliance trial, which showed that adding bevacizumab to gemcitabine and cisplatin did not improve overall survival in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma, but did improve progression-free survival (Abstract 4503).
Justin F. Gainor, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses updated findings from the ARROW study in which BLU-667, a selective RET inhibitor, demonstrated clinical activity and tolerability in patients with advanced RET fusion–positive non–small cell lung cancer (Abstract 9008).
David J. Kwiatkowski, MD, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses an interim analysis and biomarker data from a multicenter study showing that 19% of patients with NSCLC had a major pathologic response to preoperative treatment with atezolizumab (Abstract 8503).