Role of Adjuvant Olaparib for BRCA-Mutated HER2-Negative Breast Cancer

Charles Geyer, MD, medical oncologist/breast cancer specialist, and chief scientific officer, NSABP, discusses the potential impact of adjuvant olaparib (Lynparza) on the treatment landscape for patients with germline BRCA-mutated, HER2-negative, high-risk early breast cancer.

In March 2022, the FDA approved olaparib as an adjuvant treatment for patients with BRCA-mutated HER2-negative high-risk early breast cancer that were previously treated with chemotherapy before or after surgery.

Data from the phase 3 OlympiA study (NCT02032823) showed there to be an overall survival advantage with adjuvant olaparib vs placebo in this patient population. Here, Geyer discusses the importance of this development for patients with breast cancer and what will continue to be evaluated in the OlympiA trial moving forward.

Transcription:

0:08 | I think it's a very important development for the patients who have been living with not only do they have breast cancer, but they also have this cancer predisposition gene. There's long been an understandable frustration about well they have this kind of special sort of cancer that develops, it comes on early bilateral reality, there's other risks. I think it's exciting story that the abnormality that caused the cancer also now is a special vulnerability to the right kind of therapy. It's an exciting story about how basic translational science working to really understand what does it mean to have a BRCA mutation? Why did the cancers develop? How do they develop how they might be vulnerable? It's a nice story and shows how the science and then the broad clinical research community working together with our patients with our advocates can really bring us significant advances. I think this is a big step forward.

1:27 | We will continue to follow OlympiA because we want to know what the median follow-up looks like later on. Could taking this drug reduce the chances of getting a second cancer patient with a BRCA mutation? It looks like we've taken care of the patient’s first cancer, but they’ve still got risk for other cancers, is there something that might reduce that risk? These are things that we will still be able to learn from OlympiA, and we're going to be studying carefully where patients are willing to have their tumors sent into the research group, so we can keep working on and improving things.