Dr. Sanft on Sequencing of Treatments for HER2+ Breast Cancer

Tara Sanft, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, medical director of Adult Survivorship for Yale Cancer Center Survivorship Clinic, discusses sequencing of treatments for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

The combination of trastuzumab (Herceptin) and pertuzumab (Perjeta) is typically what patients will start with, explains Sanft. It usually begins with combination chemotherapy and over time as the disease becomes more controlled, you can eliminate the chemotherapy if toxicities arise, and continue on with trastuzumab or pertuzumab alone.

Patients who were previously metastatic can have long-term disease-control with essentially no evidence of disease. If the cancer continues to grow the patient can switch to trastuzumab emtansine (TDM-1), which has also been shown to be effective in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.