Breast Cancer

Young black women with breast cancer are much less likely to have BRCA testing or, if they carry a BRCA mutation, to undergo risk-reducing prophylactic mastectomy or salpingo-oophorectomy.

Women who extended their adjuvant therapy with an aromatase inhibitor to 10 years after treatment for their early-stage HR-positive breast cancer reduced their risk of recurrence by more than a third and experienced no new toxicities or worsening of quality of life.

Researchers are hoping that a new nationwide effort to encourage patients to share their tumor samples and clinical information will lead to new discoveries and better treatments.

The CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib induced a response rate of nearly 20% in heavily pretreated patients with refractory, HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer, according to findings from the phase II MONARCH 1 trial.

A biosimilar version of trastuzumab demonstrated equivalent efficacy and safety to the FDA-approved branded drug in a randomized phase III study among patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

Sacituzumab govitecan (IMMU-132) had an objective response rate of 33% in pretreated patients with triple-negative breast cancer, according to updated findings from a phase II study reported by Immunomedics, the manufacturer of the antibody-drug conjugate.

Phase I trial results demonstrate that abemaciclib, a CDK 4/6 inhibitor, had significant clinical activity and an overall response rate of 31% in patients with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer.

Frontline treatment with fulvestrant improved progression-free survival versus anastrozole for postmenopausal patients with locally-advanced or metastatic HR-positive breast cancer.

Kevin Hughes, MD, discusses the pros and cons of radiation therapy in elderly patients with breast cancer, as well as luminal A patients, and the overall changing role of the treatment in the field.

Martine J. Piccart, MD, PhD, professor of Oncology, Université Libre de Bruxelles, director of Medicine, Jules Bordet Institute, Brussels, Belgium, discusses the primary analysis of the prospective randomized MINDACT study, which evaluated the clinical utility of the 70-gene signature (MammaPrint) combined with common clinical-pathological criteria for selection of patients for adjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer with 0 to 3 positive nodes.

Researchers are exploring the safety and efficacy of the novel CDK 4/6 inhibitor ribociclib (LEE011) in the phase III MONALEESA- 7 trial.

A 5-year follow-up of the phase II NeoSphere trial confirmed that patients with HER2-positive breast cancer receiving a 3-drug neoadjuvant pertuzumab regimen had better outcomes compared with patients receiving trastuzumab and docetaxel.

The combination of the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib and letrozole significantly improved progression-free survival compared with letrozole alone for patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer.

Monica Arnedos, MD, assistant professor, Department of Medical Oncology, Institut de Cancérologie Gustave Roussy, discusses the Preoperative Palbociclib (POP) Randomized Trial for early-stage breast cancer.

Alexander Ring, MD, graduate student, University of Southern California, discusses a study investigating the molecular profiling of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as a surrogate for distant metastasis in patients with stage IV breast cancer.

Charles M. Perou, PhD, discusses how lobular breast cancer subtypes are used in clinical practice, what researchers have learned from sequencing the genome, and how determining intrinsic subtypes can help guide breast cancer therapy.

Ann H. Partridge, MD, MPH, founder and director, Program for Young Women with Breast Cancer, director, Adult Survivorship Program, senior physician, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, associate professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in young patients with breast cancer.

The addition of three biological markers to conventional breast cancer risk models significantly improved the ability to distinguish women at high and low risk.

The phase III PALOMA-2 trial has shown a significant improvement in progression-free survival for the frontline combination of palbociclib and letrozole compared letrozole alone for patients with ER-positive, HER2-negative advanced or metastatic breast cancer.