Richard L. Schilsky, MD, Chief Medical Officer of ASCO, talks about some of the most important and practice-changing findings presented this year at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, including the use of targeted and immunotherapies in earlier lines of therapy, where they have made a significant impact.
David C. Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, of the University of Pennsylvania, who trained as an oncologist, summarizes his opening lecture, a dramatic story of his battle against Castleman, a disease of the lymph nodes, his multiple near-death experiences, and the path that led him to develop a cooperative research effort making a difference for him and other patients with this idiopathic orphan illness.
Nancy U. Lin, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the HER2CLIMB study of patients with previously treated HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer that had metastasized to the brain. Adding tucatinib to trastuzumab and capecitabine doubled the intracranial response rate and reduced the risk of death by nearly half, compared with trastuzumab plus capecitabine (Abstract 1005).
Scott Kopetz, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses phase III results of the BEACON CRC study, which confirmed that, compared with standard chemotherapy, encorafenib plus cetuximab with or without binimetinib improved overall survival and objective response rate in previously treated patients with BRAF V600E–mutated metastatic colorectal cancer (Abstract 4001).
Cynthia X. Ma, MD, PhD, of Washington University, discusses results from the ALTERNATE trial, which showed neither fulvestrant nor fulvestrant plus anastrozole significantly improved endocrine-sensitive disease rate compared with anastrozole alone in postmenopausal patients with locally advanced estrogen receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer (Abstract 504).
Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, summarizes four breast cancer studies: KATHERINE, on adjuvant trastuzumab vs trastuzumab in patients with residual invasive disease after neoadjuvant therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer; KAITLIN, on trastuzumab emtansine and pertuzumab vs trastuzumab, pertuzumab, and taxane after anthracyclines as adjuvant therapy for high-risk HER2-positive early breast cancer; TRAIN-2, on neoadjuvant chemotherapy with or without anthracyclines for HER2-positive disease; and PHERGain, on chemotherapy de-escalation using an FDG-PET/CT and pathologic response–adapted strategy in HER2-positive early breast cancer (Abstracts 500, 501, 502, and 503).
