Update Breast Cancer 2021 Part 5 – Advanced Breast Cancer

Update Breast Cancer 2022 Part 6 - Advanced-Stage Breast Cancer

Large-scale study programs on CDK4/6 inhibitors, targeted therapies, and antibody-drug conjugates launched in recent years have yielded results from current studies which are now being published in journals and presented at international conferences. In this context, new results are available from the major CDK4/6 inhibitor studies. Also, an increasing amount of data is being published from large-scale genomic studies on efficacy and resistance mechanisms in patients treated with CDK4/6 inhibitors. These results now form the basis for further research plans to investigate combination therapies and treatment sequencing. Based on the latest published results, sacituzumab govitecan is now available as a second antibody-drug conjugate; this brings an advantage in terms of overall survival for patients with hormone receptor-positive (HRpos)/HER2-negative (HER2neg) breast cancer. In this review article, we summarize the latest developments and place them in context according to the current status of research.

Update Breast Cancer 2022 Part 1 – Early Stage Breast Cancer

Evidence relating to the treatment of breast cancer patients with early-stage disease has increased significantly in the past year. Abemaciclib, olaparib, and pembrolizumab are new drugs with good efficacy in the relevant patient groups. However, some questions remain unanswered. In particular, it remains unclear which premenopausal patients with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer should be spared unnecessary treatment. The question of the degree to which chemotherapy exerts a direct cytotoxic effect on the tumor or reduces ovarian function through chemotherapy could be of key importance. This group of patients could potentially be spared chemotherapy. New, previously experimental biomarker analysis methods, such as spatial analysis of gene expression (spatial transcriptomics) are gradually finding their way into large randomized phase III trials, such as the NeoTRIP trial. This in turn leads to a better understanding of the predictive factors of new therapies, for example immunotherapy. This review summarizes the scientific innovations from recent congresses such as the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2021 but also from recent publications.

Update Breast Cancer 2022 Part 2 – Advanced Stage Breast Cancer

For patients with advanced breast cancer, several novel therapies have emerged in recent years, including CDK4/6 inhibitors, immune checkpoint inhibitors, PARP inhibitors, alpelisib, tucatinib and trastuzumab-deruxtecan, and sacituzumab-govitecan, which have transformed and expanded the therapeutic landscape for patients with advanced breast cancer. Some of these substances have now been approved for use in the early stages of the disease, or are expected to be approved in the near future, so the therapeutic landscape will change once again. Therefore, current scientific efforts are focused on the introduction of new substances and understanding their mechanisms of progression and efficacy. This review summarizes recent developments with reference to recent publications and conferences. Findings on the treatment of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer and brain metastases are presented, as are a number of studies looking at biomarkers in patients with HER2-negative, hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. In particular, the introduction of oral selective estrogen receptor degraders provides new opportunities to establish biomarker-based therapy. Molecular diagnostics is establishing itself as a diagnostic marker and parameter of progression.