Unmet Needs in HER2+ Breast Cancer and Brain Metastasis Treatment

Hatem Soliman, MD, an associate member of the breast oncology program, and medical director of the clinical trials office, Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses what unmet needs still have to be addressed in the HER2-positive breast cancer space.

Soliman emphasizes the significant challenges in treating brain metastases, calling for better drug development, patient selection tools, and targeted therapy approaches to improve outcomes for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

Transcription:

0:10 | I think the unmet need for this space, in particular, [is the] brain metastases issue. It is a significant challenge because a lot of the drugs that we do use in that space may not entirely be able to overcome the sanctuary that the brain represents. Finding those improved combinations that can have sufficient activity to ward off the disease from going into the brain is going to be critically important, because we do tend to see more CNS [central nervous system] escape over time, the longer the patients go on their systemic therapy. In a way, it's 1 of those kinds of things that can happen as an escape event when they've been on treatment for a long period of time. That is an important unmet need for sure.

1:00 | The other thing as well is in trying to understand how we can best pick patients for the right therapy upfront as opposed to right now, where it's a bit more of a trial-and-error type of situation. I think the more these therapies can be targeted or applied in the right setting or paradigm that would help us spare patients unnecessarily from toxicities while applying the best drugs that give them their optimal chance for getting good disease control and durable disease control over time. I think those are going to be unmet needs going forward for medical oncologists, and figuring out how we best apply the available treatments in order to get the best outcome for our patients.