BREAST CANCER

There has been renewed interest in eribulin mesylate (Halaven) 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.

Recent promising findings with the neoadjuvant combination of the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib with anastrozole could lead to a novel therapeutic option for patients with hormone receptor (HR)–positive, HER2-negative early breast cancer.

Hyo Sook Han, MD, medical oncologist, Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses results of the phase II BROCADE trial, which evaluated the combination of the PARP inhibitor veliparib with carboplatin/paclitaxel in patients with <em>BRCA</em>-positive breast cancer.

William J. Gradishar, MD, deputy director of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, discusses the takeaways from the TransATAC trial, which was a comprehensive comparison of prognostic signatures in breast cancer.

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.

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.

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.

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

Prophylactic treatment with the combination of loperamide and budesonide reduced the rate of grade &ge;3 diarrhea associated with neratinib to 15% compared with 39.9% observed in the ExteNET trial. The rate of all-grade diarrhea was 65% with the prophylactic regimen versus 95.4% in ExteNET, according to findings from the phase II CONTROL 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 presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Maura N. Dickler, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses an ongoing clinical trial of the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib combined with the PD-L1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. She also sheds light on abemaciclib&#39;s unique mechanism of action.

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.

Using extended adjuvant aromatase inhibitor (AI) therapy after 5 years of sequential endocrine therapy in all postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive early breast cancer is not supported by the results of a phase III randomized study.

In a study that sheds light on acquired resistance mechanisms to anticancer therapies, the genomic landscape of recurrent metastatic estrogen receptor (ER)&ndash;positive breast cancer differed significantly from the mutational profile of primary disease.

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.

The&nbsp;<em>HER2</em>-enriched subtype of HER2-positive breast cancer is a strong predictor of sensitivity to dual HER2 blockade without the use of chemotherapy, according to findings presented&nbsp;at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Higher levels of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) were associated with improvements in overall survival (OS) for patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer treated with docetaxel, trastuzumab (Herceptin), and pertuzumab (Perjeta).

The addition of an aromatase inhibitor (AI) to pertuzumab (Perjeta) and trastuzumab (Herceptin) improved progression-free survival (PFS) by 3.09 months, when compared with trastuzumab plus an AI, according to findings from the phase II PERTAIN trial.

​The addition of the veliparib to carboplatin/paclitaxel demonstrated promising objective response rates and trends toward improvements in progression-free survival and overall survival in patients with advanced&nbsp;<em>BRCA</em>-positive breast cancer.

Extending treatment with letrozole by an additional 5 years after 5 years of successful treatment did not improve disease-free survival or overall survival in postmenopausal women with early-stage hormone receptor -positive breast cancer.

Adding everolimus to fulvestrant reduced the risk of progression or death by 40% compared with fulvestrant alone for postmenopausal patients with metastatic HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer who are resistant to aromatase inhibitor therapy.

Mark D. Pegram, MD, director of the Breast Cancer Oncology Program, Stanford Women&rsquo;s Cancer Center, co-director of Molecular Therapeutics Program, Stanford Medicine, discusses the phase III SOPHIA trial, which is exploring margetuximab plus chemotherapy versus trastuzumab plus chemotherapy in the treatment of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

Debu Tripathy, MD, chair, Breast Medical Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the potential for immunotherapy in the treatment of HER2+ breast cancer.

An expert panel, consisting of the College of American Pathologists, American Society for Clinical Pathology, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology&nbsp;issued comprehensive, evidence-based guidelines for clinicians and pathologists regarding the testing of HER2 status for patients with gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma.&nbsp;

The European Commission has approved the CDK4/6 inhibitor palbociclib as a treatment for adult patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer, either in combination with an aromatase inhibitor in the frontline setting or combined with fulvestrant after progression on endocrine therapy.