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).
Rowan T. Chlebowski, MD, PhD, of the Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, discusses the long-term influence of using estrogen plus progestin or estrogen alone on breast cancer incidence and mortality (Abstract GS5-00).
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?
Nadine M. Tung, MD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, discusses cisplatin vs doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide (AC) as neoadjuvant treatment in BRCA-mutation carriers with HER2-negative breast cancer. Although cisplatin as a single agent shows activity in this setting, the pathologic complete response with this agent alone is not higher than that with standard AC chemotherapy (Abstract GS6-03).
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).
