SAN ANTONIO – Dr. William J. Gradishar, Betsy Bramsen Professor of Breast Oncology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago; and Dr. Hope S. Rugo, Director, Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, discuss the best to come from the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, including:
• The ECOG, Turkish, and Indian trials that examine whether mastectomy results in better outcomes for the 10% of patients who present with de novo metastatic breast cancer and an intact primary tumor, as well as the accrual status of the U.S. trial examining this issue.
The video associated with this article is no longer available on this site. Please view all of our videos on the MDedge YouTube channel.
• The parameters of the NeoALTTO trial and the implications of dual targeting in early and preoperative HER2-positive breast cancer.
• Trials aiming to find less toxic regimens, and examining whether and when giving less – such as providing weekly paclitaxel for 12 weeks and a year of trastuzumab – is a better approach.
• Reports from a SWOG trial that will examine whether the numeric levels of circulating tumor cell markers can be used to make changes in therapy for patients with metastatic disease, and whether those changes can improve patients’ overall outcomes.
• Studies on novel agents in the neoadjuvant setting, including the CALGB 40603 trial of paclitaxel with and without bevacizumab and with and without carboplatin in patients with triple-negative disease. The findings may have implications for how newer agents are tested in patients with triple-negative disease.
Dr. Gradishar and Dr. Rugo also discuss reports on one of the arms of the I-SPY2 trial examining adaptive randomization of patients with MammaPrint high-risk disease to standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy vs. novel agents with paclitaxel, followed by anthracycline. The results represent the first oral presentation of data on the PARP inhibitor veliparib and carboplatin.