Breast Cancer

San Antonio, TX—Extended adjuvant endocrine therapy beyond 5 years with an aromatase inhibitor (AI) failed to improve disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive breast cancer who were enrolled in the 3 large National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) B-52, IDEAL, and DATA studies, which were presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

San Antonio, TX—Two HER2-targeted drugs improve progression-free survival (PFS) compared with a single drug when combined with an aromatase inhibitor in patients with advanced breast cancer, as reported at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

San Antonio, TX—The use of an investigational electronic scalp-cooling device in patients with breast cancer who had received alopecia-inducing chemotherapy resulted in reduced or no hair loss in 50% of the patients, according to results of a randomized clinical trial reported at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. By contrast, no patient in the control group had hair preservation.

San Antonio, TX—Neoadjuvant therapy with the investigative CDK4/CDK6 inhibitor abemaciclib, alone or in combination with anastrozole (Arimidex), showed promising activity in postmenopausal hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer enrolled in the phase 2 NeoMONARCH study. Correlative tissue studies demonstrated that abemaciclib inhibited cell-cycle proliferation and activated the immune system, supporting its anticancer activity. Abemaciclib received a breakthrough therapy designation in 2015 as monotherapy for the treatment of patients with refractory HR-positive advanced breast cancer in heavily pretreated patients.

San Antonio, TX—The addition of the mTOR inhibitor everolimus (Afinitor) to the antiestrogen chemotherapy fulvestrant (Faslodex) led to a 2-fold increase in progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with advanced hormone receptor (HR)-positive breast cancer compared with fulvestrant alone, according to results of a randomized clinical trial presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Approximately 33% of older women with early-stage breast cancer are not being tested for bone mineral density (BMD) before starting aromatase inhibitor therapy, according to a new and to date the largest population-based study on this topic (Charlson J, et al. J Natl Compr Canc Netw. 2016;14:875-880).

Extending aromatase inhibitor therapy with letrozole for an additional 5 years beyond standard treatment with letrozole improved disease-free survival (DFS) and reduced the rate of new contralateral breast cancer in postmenopausal women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer.

An ongoing clinical trial of a novel strategy to evaluate new chemotherapy regimens for patients with early-stage breast cancer has identified another neoadjuvant combination therapy worthy of a phase 3 clinical trial involving patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.