SABCS: San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

With human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)–low breast cancer still a relatively newly classified disease subtype, research is increasingly focused on the disease, in which cells express lower levels of the HER2 protein than are adequate to classify a patient as having HER2-positive disease.

Jose P. Leone, MD, director of the program for breast cancer in men at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, shares why patients and providers need to pay more attention to how breast cancer impacts male patients.

A highlight of day 2 at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium was the morning presentation of a pair of studies highlighting the ongoing survival benefit associated with trastuzumab deruxtecan in metastatic breast cancer.

Dawn L. Hershman, MD, an oncologist from Columbia University, shared insight into the current challenge of ensuring drug adherence within clinical trials and how this adherence can impact the quality of care for patients in real-world settings.

Irene M. Kang, MD, from City of Hope, shared some of the results from her analysis of cognitive impairment in women with breast cancer who participated in the RxPonder study, which assessed which patients would benefit most from chemotherapy.

Costs are an adverse effect of treatment just like any other adverse effect, with slightly more patients worried about the financial impact of their cancer diagnosis than they are about actually dying from their disease, noted Fumiko Chino, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center.

Neil Iyengar, MD, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, is expecting updates on therapies to fight human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2)–positive breast cancer and novel antibody drug conjugates at the upcoming San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

The annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) will once again take place in a hybrid fashion, with in-person attendees returning to the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center to hear the latest clinical and basic research, as well as see several of their peers receive awards for their contributions to the space.

Costs of extending human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) therapy for patients with metastatic breast cancer were estimated in a retrospective study.

Investigators hope to duplicate promising phase 2b trial results with an experimental peptide vaccine in a population of nearly 500 patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 breast cancer.

Funmi Olopade, MD, FACP, professor of medicine and human genetics and founding director of the Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics and Global Health at the University of Chicago Medical Center, previews her keynote address for the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

Recent years have seen calls for genetic testing for all patients with breast cancer. A session at the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium reviewed the evidence for, and against, such testing.

Hope Rugo, MD, director of Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the benefits of oral paclitaxel in metastatic breast cancer.

Gregory Vidal, MD, PhD, West Cancer Center and Research Institute, discusses the methodology of the Neat-HER study on neratinib in the extended adjuvant setting in HER2-positive breast cancer.

A spotlight poster discussion at SABCS highlighted topics in genomic testing, potentially game-changing therapies, and predictive biomarkers in HR-positive breast cancer.

Poster presentations at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium demonstrated the clinical relevance and efficacy of oral paclitaxel plus encequidar in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer.

Lee Schwartzberg, MD, FACP, chief medical director of West Cancer Center and chief medical officer of OneOncology, discusses the approvals of pembrolizumab and sacituzumab govitecan for patients with triple-negative breast cancer.

During the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2020, Lajos Pusztai, MD, DPhil, of Yale Cancer Center, reviewed recently established and emerging biomarkers in both the neoadjuvant and metastatic breast cancer settings.

Yuan Yuan, MD, PhD, medical oncologist at City of Hope, discusses an ongoing study on ipatasertib with chemotherapy and atezolizumab presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2020.

City of Hope's Joanne Mortimer, MD, a medical oncologist and director of the Women's Cancer Program, discusses a poster presentation from the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

A panel at the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium discussed 3 new drug approvals from the past year, highlighting changes in the treatment landscape across multiple breast cancer types.

Rachel Jimenez, MD, radiation oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, outlines the prevalence of cardiac toxicity, as well as the short-term and long-term impacts.

The first session at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2020 looked at how the COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately affecting care for minority patients.

There are new technologies that allow for genetic counseling services through which the provider does not even need to get that involved in the process, said Banu Arun, MD, medical oncologist, Department of Breast Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Listening to patient concerns and issues and communicating with them can really help providers keep patients with breast cancer adherent to their hormonal therapies, said Erica Mayer, MD, MPH, assistant professor, medicine, Harvard Medical School.

Two abstracts on liquid biopsy tests revealed the potential of analyzing circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in promoting heightened decision-making by clinicians for patients with early-stage and metastatic breast cancer.

In phase 3 trial results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio, Texas, oral paclitaxel with encequidar, the first orally administered paclitaxel, was shown to exhibit superior confirmed response and survival with less neuropathy for patients with metastatic breast cancer compared with intravenous (IV) paclitaxel.

Rita Nanda, MD, associate professor, medicine, The University of Chicago Medicine, outlines the design of the I-SPY2 clinical trial and what the results have been so far.

Ensuring that prognostic or predictive tests to help make decisions regarding radiation therapy are accurate and clinically validated remains a challenge, said Corey Speers, MD, PhD, assistant professor, radiation oncology, University of Michigan.

Data from the MINDACT trial revealed that among women with luminal breast cancers (hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative by local pathology) with a high clinical risk and low genomic risk, those aged 40 to 50 years had a greater, but insignificant, benefit from chemotherapy than patients older than 50.