San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

A continuous low-dose of ribociclib demonstrated both preliminary activity and an acceptable safety profile when compared with an intermittent dose of ribociclib when combined with fulvestrant in the treatment of postmenopausal patients with hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer.

Testing for BRCA1 methylation or mRNA silencing did not predict a better response to carboplatin over docetaxel in patients with advanced triple-negative or BRCA1/2 breast cancer.

Aleix Prat, MD, PhD, head of the Department of Medical Oncology, the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, discusses the results of the open-label PAMELA trial, in which the HER2-enriched subtype predicted pathologic complete response to targeted treatment in patients with HER2-positive, hormone receptor-positive breast cancer.

Mothaffar F. Rimawi, MD, associate professor and medical director at the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at the Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine, discusses the findings of the NSABP B-52 trial, which explored the addition of neoadjuvant estrogen deprivation therapy to docetaxel and carboplatin plus the HER2 inhibitors trastuzumab (Herceptin) and pertuzumab (Perjeta) as treatment for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

Véronique Diéras, MD, Department of Clinical Research, Institut Curie Paris & Saint Cloud, discusses results of a phase II trial exploring the combination of the PARP inhibitor veliparib with chemotherapy in patients with BRCA1/2-mutant breast cancer.

Brock Schroeder, PhD, senior director, Medical and Scientific Affairs at bioTheranostics, discusses findings regarding the Breast Cancer Index in predicting patients with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer at high risk of recurrence.

Ricardo H. Alvarez, MD, MSc, director of Cancer Research, breast medical oncologist, Southeastern Regional Medical Center, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, discusses updated findings regarding the mechanism of action with eribulin mesylate (Halaven) and how it impacts patients with HER2-negative breast cancer.

Julie R. Nangia, MD, assistant professor, Breast Center-Clinic, faculty senator, Baylor College of Medicine, discusses the results of the Scalp Cooling Alopecia Prevention trial (SCALP) for patients with early-stage breast cancer.

Treatment with pembrolizumab continued to show a consistent durable benefit with an additional year of follow-up for heavily pretreated patients with recurrent PD-L1-positive metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Howard A. "Skip" Burris, MD, president of Clinical Operations and chief medical officer at Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses updated findings from the MONALEESA-2 trial, which explored first-line treatment with ribociclib plus letrozole in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer.

Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, associate director, Clinical Research, Breast Oncology, Susan F. Smith Center for Women's Cancers, senior physician, instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses a phase Ib/II trial exploring eribulin mesylate (Halaven) in combination with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

The combination of pembrolizumab and eribulin demonstrated a 33.3% objective response rate for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who received 0 to 2 prior lines of therapy.

The artificial intelligence computer program Watson for Oncology (WFO) achieved a high degree of concordance with tumor board recommendations in a double-blinded validation study in Bengaluru, India, according to results presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

Aromatase inhibitor (AI) therapy may pose a risk of cardiovascular disease to postmenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer, raising the possibility of a long-term complication in an era of growing survivorship when patients are treated with estrogen-targeting drugs for years.

Women who are experiencing symptoms of menopause are less likely to adhere to treatment, according to findings presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

A subgroup analysis of the randomized MONALEESA-2 trial showed that patients with advanced HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, and visceral metastases obtained a significant benefit from treatment with the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib combined with letrozole.

Treatment with sacituzumab govitecan was well-tolerated and induced durable responses, some lasting longer than 1 year, for heavily pretreated patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Findings from the first prospective, randomized clinical trial to evaluate modern scalp-cooling demonstrate that the system is safe and effective in reducing hair loss in women being treated with chemotherapy for their breast cancer, especially for those on taxane-based regimens.

Prophylactic treatment with the combination of loperamide and budesonide reduced the rate of grade ≥3 diarrhea associated with neratinib to 15% compared with 39.9% observed in the ExteNET trial.

There has been renewed interest in eribulin mesylate following its FDA approval for advanced or unresectable liposarcoma and with the introduction of a growing body of preclinical work suggesting the agent has a novel anti–mesenchymal mechanism of action.

​Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, medical oncologist, associate professor of Medicine, medical director, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Clinical Research Unit, UCLA, discusses the findings of the neoMONARCH trial, a neoadjuvant regimen combining the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib with anastrozole, which induced a response rate of 54.7% in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative early-stage breast cancer.

John Robertson, MD, professor of Surgery, University of Nottingham, Royal Derby Hospital Centre, United Kingdom, discusses a subgroup analysis of the FALCON trial, which compared treatment with fulvestrant (Faslodex) versus anastrozole (Arimidex) in patients with HR-positive advanced breast cancer.

An attempt to strengthen neoadjuvant treatment of patients with locally advanced HR-positive and HER2-positive breast cancer by adding estrogen deprivation therapy to a standard regimen failed to significantly improve response rates but did illustrate the extensive toxicity of the chemotherapy agents used in this setting.

A biomarker analysis of participants in a phase II breast cancer trial demonstrated potential for identifying tumor markers to predict susceptibility to specific therapies.

The HER2-enriched subtype of HER2-positive breast cancer is a strong predictor of sensitivity to dual HER2 blockade without the use of chemotherapy.

Adjuvant ibandronate (Boniva) added to hormone therapy did not provide a clinical benefit to postmenopausal patients with HR-positive, early-stage breast cancer, according to findings from the phase III TEAM IIB trial.

A neoadjuvant regimen combining the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib with anastrozole induced a response rate of 54.7% in patients with HR+/HER2-negative early-stage breast cancer, according to findings from the phase II neoMONARCH trial.

The addition of an aromatase inhibitor (AI) to pertuzumab and trastuzumab improved progression-free survival by 3.09 months, when compared with trastuzumab plus an AI.

Median progression-free survival was improved by 2.1 months with the addition of the pan-PI3K inhibitor buparlisib to fulvestrant for women with HR-positive/HER2-negative advanced breast cancer who received a prior aromatase inhibitor and progressed on or after an mTOR inhibitor.

Geoffrey Lindeman, MD, joint head, Stem Cells and Cancer Division at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, discusses a study exploring RANK ligand as a target for breast cancer prevention in patients who harbor the BRCA1 mutation.