BREAST CANCER

A 59-Year-Old Woman With HER2+ De Novo Metastatic Breast Cancer

Indigenous American ancestry has been linked to an increased incidence of HER2-positive breast cancer, according to the Peruvian Genetics and Genomics of Breast Cancer Study study published in Cancer Research.

The FDA has accepted and granted a priority review to a supplemental Biologics License Application for pembrolizumab for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with unresectable or metastatic solid tumors with tissue tumor mutational burden-high who have progressed following prior treatment and who have no satisfactory alternative treatment options.

Treatment with sacituzumab govitecan resulted in “compelling evidence of efficacy” in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, leading to an early halt of the phase III ASCENT study, announced Immunomedics in a press release.

Kevin Hughes, MD, discusses how genetic testing has changed and how much testing should be done for patients with breast cancer.

A statistically significant improvement in the total pathologic complete response rate, the primary end point of the study, was observed with neoadjuvant treatment of pertuzumab, trastuzumab and docetaxel compared with placebo, trastuzumab, and docetaxel in Asian patients with&nbsp;<a><em>ERBB2</em></a>&nbsp;-positive early or locally advanced breast cancer, according to the phase III PEONY trial.

A 54-Year-Old Woman With Stage 2 HER2+ Breast Cancer

An association was found between a lower risk of grade 3 or higher chemotherapy toxicity with higher body mass indexes and normal albumin, a protein made in the liver, levels in older adult patients with solid tumors, according to an analysis of a prospective, multicenter study.

A sudden surge in the cases of COVID-19 due to pandemic, along with efforts to contain it, has led to multiple challenges that no country has experienced in the last several decades. The global pandemic from COVID-19 poses a unique set of challenges not only for patients with cancer who need their treatment, but also for caregivers, oncologists, and the overall care team.

Patients with early-stage breast cancer who received pelareorep demonstrated consistent data with safety run-in data and had a favorable toxicity profile, according to an cohort analysis from the window-of-opportunity study, AWARE-1.

The FDA has approved a new 420-mg multi-dose vial of Ontruzant a biosimilar of trastuzumab, according to a press release from Samsung Bioepis.

In an interview with&nbsp;Targeted Oncology, Kashyap Patel, MD, discussed the COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of new precautions in his practice as the number of COVID-19 infected persons rises in the state.<br /> &nbsp;

Patients harboring IDH1/2 muta&shy;tions may receive benefit by the use of PARP inhibitors, with investigators initi&shy;ating clinical trials in patients across multiple different tumor types to determine the efficacy of this strategy.

Treatment with pembrolizumab demonstrated antitumor activity along with tolerable toxicity in patients with 4 different rare and hard-to-treat malignancies, according to results from a phase II study led by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers and published in the&nbsp;Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer.

Nelipepimut-S in combination with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor demonstrated doubling of the difference in the increase in antigen-specific CD8 cytotoxic T-lymphocytes in patients with ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast who were HLA-A2-positive or A3-positive, express HER2 at immunohistochemistry1+, 2+, or 3+ levels, and are pre- or post-menopausal, according to preliminary results from the phase II VADIS study.

Circulating free DNA in the blood may be a more effective way to measure disease in patients with breast cancer and track the progression of the disease, according to a study from researchers at the Fox Chase Cancer Center.

To help assess the advances the United States has made in decreasing cancer-related deaths, a collective of public health bodies found that monitoring trends in cancer risk, screening test use, and mortality is informative. A report published in&nbsp;<em>Cancer</em>&nbsp;shows that progress has been made in recent years, but there is more work to be&nbsp;<a>done.</a>

From 2001 to 2017, the cancer death rates continued to decline in the United States, and these decreases were observed in all major racial and ethnic groups, as well as in males, females, adolescents, young adults, and children. However, the rates of cancer incidence for all cancers slightly increased in females from 2012 to 2016, according to the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, which was published in&nbsp;Cancer.^&nbsp;

The FDA has recommended that a preliminary meeting for a potential Breakthrough Therapy designation be requested for leronlimab as a treatment of patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, based on positive data from a phase Ib/II study.

The FDA has accepted a Biologics License Application for MYL-1402O, a proposed biosimilar to bevacizumab, according to a press release from co-developers Biocon and Mylan. The BLA is seeking approval for the biosimilar as a treatment for multiple types of cancer and the FDA has set an action date goal of December 27, 2020, for a decision on the BLA.

As the new coronavirus disease 2019 creates problems internationally, health-wise and economically, it is also becoming a cause for concern throughout the oncology community.

Despite evidence from previous studies that showed that platinum-based chemotherapy agents are active in patients with breast cancer, platinum-based chemotherapy was not found to be superior to standard chemotherapy in terms of eliciting pathologic complete responses in patients with HER2-negative breast cancer carrying a&nbsp;BRCA&nbsp;mutation, according to data from the INFORM trial published in the&nbsp;Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The combination of fulvestrant and capivasertib prolonged progression-free survival compared with placebo in patients with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer who were previously treated with aromatase inhibition, according to results from the phase II FAKTION trial, published in&nbsp;The Lancet Oncology.