San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

John F. R. Robertson, MD, discusses overall survival data from the phase II FIRST study, which looked at fulvestrant as first-line therapy for patients with advanced breast cancer.

Eileen Rakovitch, MD, associate professor, radiation oncologist, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, discusses predicting risk of recurrence in women with DCIS.

A 25-gene hereditary cancer panel can increase the identification of deleterious mutations by almost 70%, over testing for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) or Lynch syndrome alone.

Naoto Tada Ueno, MD, PhD, FACP, from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses counting circulating tumor cells for prognostic reasons.

Denise A. Yardley, MD, from Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses toxicities associated with treatment with PI3K inhibitors for breast cancer.

Five years of tamoxifen continues to offer protection against breast cancer— reducing the risk of breast cancer by 29% in otherwise healthy women at high risk of the disease who have been followed now for 16 to 22 years.

Older patients with moderate- or high-risk breast cancer had a similar disease-free survival with the bisphosphonate therapy ibandronate alone or in combination with capecitabine, according Gunter von Minckwitz, MD, who reported the results at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Women with HR+ breast cancer who remained premenopausal after receiving chemotherapy had a lower risk of disease recurrence when adding ovarian suppression to adjuvant exemestane or—to a lesser extent—tamoxifen, compared with standard tamoxifen alone.

Adding bevacizumab to standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy significantly improved pathologic complete response rates in women with basal-like breast cancer compared with non-basal-like subtypes. These results from the CALGB 40603 trial were presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) was more effective than conventional paclitaxel as part of a neoadjuvant regimen for patients with high-risk early breast cancer in a large German study. These results were presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Sara Hurvitz, MD, medical oncologist, UCLA Medical Center, discusses the results of a study looking at pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

The PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) has demonstrated promising clinical activity and an acceptable safety profile in heavily pretreated patients with recurrent metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

David L. Rimm MD, PhD, from Yale School of Medicine, discusses the need for further research into tissue biomarkers in breast cancer.

Adding the investigational PI3K inhibitor pictilisib to fulvestrant in patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) yielded a doubling in progression-free survival (PFS) in women with both estrogen receptor (ER)– and progesterone receptor (PR)–positive disease.

Women with HER2-positive breast cancer and high levels of stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (S-TILs) treated with chemotherapy alone had an 80% lower likelihood of disease recurrence compared to those with lower TIL counts.

Charles L. Shapiro, MD, discusses the IBIS II trial, which studied anastrozole in preventing breast cancer in postmenopausal women at increased risk of breast cancer.

Brian Leyland-Jones, MBBS, PhD, director of Edith Sanford Breast Cancer Research, discusses the results of the SWOG S0500 trial, which looked at circulating tumor cell (CTC) levels in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

According to results of the Phase III SWOG S0500 clinical trial, switching chemotherapy based on level of elevated CTCs after one cycle of chemotherapy did not improve OS or PFS in women with metastatic breast cancer.

Study investigators reported at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium that the addition of carboplatin to standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy increased pathologic complete response (pCR) rates in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

According to the results of a prospective, randomized, controlled trial, in women with metastatic breast cancer that responds to frontline chemotherapy, locoregional treatment (LRT) of the primary tumor and axillary nodes does not produce an increase in overall survival (OS).

Findings reported at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium showed that PIK3CA-mutated tumors in patients with HER2-positive (HER+) breast cancer (BC) are associated with a much lower rate of pathological complete response (pCR).

A new study reported at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium shows that a prescribed exercise program reduces joint pain in breast cancer survivors taking aromatase inhibitors (AIs), with pain reductions observed at all levels of exercise.

According to newly reported findings from the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study II (IBIS-II), anastrozole may be a new option for primary prevention of breast cancer in postmenopausal women at high risk for the disease.

In women with hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer, the addition of dasatinib to standard aromatase inhibitor therapy with letrozole doubled progression-free survival (PFS) compared with letrozole alone.

If treated with hormonal therapy and considered to be at low risk for breast cancer recurrence, women aged 65 and older with hormone receptor-positive, axillary node-negative breast cancer may be able to forego radiation therapy (RT) after breast conserving surgery.

Sukumar Nagendran, MD, vice president, medical affairs, Quest Diagnostics, describes BRCAvantage, a test to detect BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

Rodrigo Goncalves, MD, postdoctoral fellow, Washington University School of Medicine, discusses the development of a standardized Ki-67 assay.

According to results from the large randomized BETH trial, bevacizumab did not improve invasive disease-free survival (IDFS) or overall survival (OS) when added to adjuvant therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer.

Neil M. Iyengar, MD, discusses a phase II study looking at an omega-3 fatty acid in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) survivors.

Massimo Cristofanilli, MD, director, Breast Care Center, Jefferson University Hospitals, discusses molecular subtyping in the diagnosis and treatment of breast can