SABCS: San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

The bar for who should get genetic testing for breast cancer keeps getting lowered, and oncologists have to keep informed about which results should trigger a referral for germline testing, said Nadine Tung, MD, director, Cancer Risk and Prevention Program, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and associate professor, medicine, Harvard Medical School.

Using biomarker tests can help personalize care for women with ductal carcinoma in situ and determine the risks of using or not using radiation, said Eileen Rakovitch, MD, MSc, FRCPC, professor, department of radiation oncology, University of Toronto.

In 3 abstracts presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio, Texas, patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and quality of life were measured for different therapeutic interventions aiming to either heighten tumor detection or ease chemotherapy-induced effects.

Results from the phase 2 DESTINY-Breast01 clinical trial show the novel efficacy of trastuzumab deruxtecan in providing durable benefit to heavily pretreated patients having undergone other HER2-targeted treatments.

Overall survival was shown to be greater but insignificant in patients administered pertuzumab compared with placebo, while subgroups of lymph node–positive and hormone receptor–negative patients were distinguished as major beneficiaries, according to the results of the second interim analysis of APHINITY presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio, Texas.