A Year in Research

There’s more to updates in breast cancer treatment than approvals alone. Groundbreaking research continues at a breakneck pace, incorporating novel agents and innovative strategies. From major meetings, to clinical reports, the future of breast cancer treatment starts in Miami. Highlighted below is just a small part of what happened this year.

Early last year, the AACR Annual Meeting highlighted that immunotherapy may have an expanded role in treating breast cancer. The PD-L1 inhibitor, atezolizumab, was shown to trigger a response in certain patients with TNBC. Abstracts at ASCO then showed the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab had a significant response rate in patients with untreated TNBC.

The 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting brought us the first definitive data on the use of PARP inhibition in breast cancer. Olaparib, initially approved for ovarian cancer treatment in 2014, was shown to increase progression-free survival, when compared to chemotherapy, in the phase III OlympiAD trial.

Then, at the 2017 ESMO Congress, data from the phase II LORELEI trial showed the potential of PI3K inhibitor taselisib in the neoadjuvant setting, where it increased patients’ overall response rate when used in combination with letrozole, compared with letrozole alone.