Hope S. Rugo, MD, on Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: Treatment Findings From KEYNOTE-355 on Pembrolizumab and Chemotherapy
ESMO Congress 2021
Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, discusses phase III results from the KEYNOTE-355 study of pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, which improved overall survival vs chemotherapy alone in patients with previously untreated locally recurrent, inoperable, or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer whose tumors expressed PD-L1 (Abstract LBA16).
The ASCO Post Staff
Susana N. Banerjee, MBBS, PhD, of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, discusses phase I results that have generated interest in the combination of the RAF/MEK inhibitor VS-6766 and the FAK inhibitor defactinib for patients with recurrent low-grade serous ovarian cancer, a disease that typically has limited response to conventional chemotherapy and hormonal therapy. The data support ongoing investigation (Abstract 725MO).
The ASCO Post Staff
Jason J. Luke, MD, of UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, discusses phase III results showing that adjuvant pembrolizumab for patients with resected stage IIB and IIC melanoma decreased the risk of disease recurrence or death by 35% compared with placebo. It was also associated with significantly prolonged recurrence-free survival (Abstract LBA3).
The ASCO Post Staff
Nicoletta Colombo, MD, of the Istituto Europeo Oncologico, discusses phase III results that showed improvements in progression-free and overall survival with a combination of pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, compared with placebo and chemotherapy, for patients with persistent, recurrent, or metastatic cervical cancer. These benefits were seen regardless of PD-L1 expression and concomitant bevacizumab use, suggesting that pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy, with or without bevacizumab, may be a new standard of care for this population (Abstract LBA2).
The ASCO Post Staff
Jenny F. Seligmann, MBChB, PhD, of the University of Leeds, discusses phase II findings that suggest adavosertib improved progression-free survival, compared with active monitoring, by inhibiting the WEE1 kinase in patients with RAS- and TP53-mutant metastatic colorectal cancer. In the trial, adavosertib’s activity tended to be even greater in left-sided tumors (Abstract 382O).
The ASCO Post Staff
Neeraj Agarwal, MD, of Hunstman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, discusses efficacy and safety results from the COSMIC-021 study, in which cabozantinib plus atezolizumab demonstrated clinically meaningful activity and a manageable safety profile in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The findings support a phase III study of these agents vs a second line of novel hormonal therapy (Abstract LBA24).
