Terry P. Mamounas, MD, MPH, on Extending Letrozole Treatment in Hormone Receptor–Positive Breast Cancer
2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
Terry P. Mamounas, MD, MPH, of Orlando Health UF Health Cancer Center, discusses 10-year results from NRG Oncology/NSABP B-42, which showed that, for postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer who have completed previous adjuvant therapy with an aromatase inhibitor or with tamoxifen followed by an aromatase inhibitor, extended treatment with letrozole improved disease-free survival (Abstract GS4-01).
Miguel Martín, MD, PhD, of the Gregorio Marañón Institute and GEICAM, discusses phase III study findings that showed no improvement in progression-free survival with palbociclib plus endocrine therapy vs capecitabine in patients with hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer whose disease progressed on aromatase inhibitors—although the drug combination was generally better tolerated than capecitabine (Abstract GS2-07).
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?
Belinda Kingston, MB ChB, of the Institute of Cancer Research London, discusses next-generation sequencing results from the plasmaMATCH trial, including the incidence of gene alterations overall, as well as the associations with clinical and pathologic features that may help direct treatment decisions (Abstract GS3-07).
Ralph R. Weichselbaum, MD, of the University of Chicago, summarizes a plenary lecture in which he presented data that could guide future clinical strategies: studies supporting the basis and classification of oligometastatic disease, including breast cancer; and basic and clinical data on radioimmunotherapy (Abstract PL2).
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).
