Milan Radovich, PhD, on ctDNA After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy and Recurrence in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
Milan Radovich, PhD, of Indiana University School of Medicine, discusses trial findings that show patients with triple-negative breast cancer who are at high risk of relapse after receiving preoperative chemotherapy can be risk-stratified based on the presence of minimal residual disease as determined by circulating tumor DNA and circulating tumor cells (Abstract GS5-02).
Priyanka Sharma, MD, of the University of Kansas Medical Center, reviews new phase III data on adding oral fluoropyrimidine to adjuvant endocrine therapy, the current standard of care, in the setting of hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative primary breast cancer (Abstract GS1-09).
Joseph Sparano, MD, of the Montefiore Medical Center, discusses three challenges:
- How can gene-expression profiles and other diagnostic tests be used to guide the use of adjuvant systemic therapy?
- Is it time to reappraise active surveillance?
- Are there diagnostic and therapeutic strategies that can identify tumors at highest risk of metastasis, and novel therapies that can block the spread of disease?
Joerg Heil, MD, PhD, of the University Hospital Heidelberg, discusses findings on how accurately this technique can diagnose residual disease and pathologic complete response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer. These data may help tailor, de-escalate, and potentially avoid unnecessary surgeries (Abstract GS5-03).
Hongchao Pan, PhD, of the University of Oxford, discusses an analysis of 86,000 women in the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group database, which showed that the risk of distant recurrence 20 years after a diagnosis of node-negative, estrogen receptor–negative early-stage breast cancer in women who discontinued endocrine therapy at 5 years is likely to be about a third lower now than in his group’s previous report (Abstract GS2-04).
Javier Cortes, MD, PhD, of the IOB Institute of Oncology, discusses study findings that suggested pembrolizumab offered a prolonged survival benefit compared to chemotherapy for a subset of patients with previously treated metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. In the trial, high tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes were significantly associated with better clinical outcomes with the checkpoint inhibitor.
