POPULARITY
Featuring perspectives from Dr Joshua K Sabari, including the following topics: Jänne PA et al. Final analysis results and patient-reported outcomes from DESTINY-Lung02 — A dose-blinded, randomized, phase 2 study of trastuzumab deruxtecan in patients with HER2-mutant metastatic NSCLC. J Thorac Oncol 2025;20(12):1814-28. (0:00) Heymach JV et al. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) analysis following zongertinib treatment (tx) in patients (pts) with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): Phase Ia/Ib Beamion LUNG-1 study. ESMO 2025;Abstract 2020P. (8:30) Schram AM et al. Beamion PANTUMOR-1: Rationale and design of a phase II trial of zongertinib in HER2-overexpressed/amplified or HER2-mutant solid tumors. Future Oncol 2026;22(7):795-803. (12:53) Johnson ML et al. Beamion LUNG-2: A phase III randomized controlled trial of zongertinib (BI 1810631) versus standard of care in patients with locally advanced/metastatic non-squamous NSCLC harboring HER2 tyrosine kinase domain (TKD) mutations. ASCO 2024;Abstract TPS8654. (19:40) Le X et al. SOHO-02: Phase III trial of BAY 2927088 in patients with locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC with HER2-activating mutations. ASCO 2025;Abstract TPS8648. (21:41) Li BT et al. Open-label, randomized, multicenter, phase 3 study evaluating trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) as first-line treatment in patients with unresectable, locally advanced, or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring HER2 exon 19 or 20 mutations (DESTINY-Lung04). ASCO 2022;Abstract TPS9137. (22:59) Jänne PA et al. Trastuzumab deruxtecan for ERBB2-mutant metastatic NSCLC with or without brain metastases: A secondary analysis of randomized clinical trials. JAMA Netw Open 2025;8(11):e2543107. (24:37) CME information and select publications
In today's episode, we spoke with Paolo Tarantino, MD, PhD. Dr Tarantino is a breast medical oncologist and advanced fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.In our exclusive interview, Dr Tarantino discussed practice-informing data regarding antibody-drug conjugates in breast cancer that were presented at the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting, including the use of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu) plus pertuzumab (Perjeta) for first-line treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer based on findings from the phase 3 DESTINY-Breast09 trial (NCT04784715); updated safety data from the phase 3 DESTINY-Breast05 trial (NCT04622319) that indicated that T-DXd–associated interstitial lung disease is reversible with steroids, although radiation pneumonitis is non-reversible; and the phase 3 OPTIMA trial (ISRCTN42400492) results, which suggested that the PAM50 signature can identify patients who may not need chemotherapy, potentially sparing them from unnecessary treatment.
Featuring an interview with Prof Dr Sibylle Loibl, including the following topics: Perspectives on overall survival gains achieved over the years for patients with metastatic breast cancer (mBC) (0:00) Previous treatment and patient outcomes in the DESTINY-Breast09 trial of trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) with or without pertuzumab (5:35) Role of endocrine therapy in the treatment of hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive mBC (8:01) Targeting the PI3K signaling pathway in HER2-positive mBC (11:08) Contraindications for T-DXd; T-DXd-associated gastrointestinal toxicities and interstitial lung disease (13:53) Optimal duration of and therapeutic partner for T-DXd as first-line maintenance therapy for patients with HER2-positive mBC (20:44) Case: A woman in her early 40s with metastatic relapse of HER2-positive breast cancer 2 years after completing neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy (26:54) Role of exercise and weight control in the management of breast cancer; effect of pregnancy on the breast tumor immune environment (40:03) CME information and select publications
In today's episode, we welcomed Charles E. Geyer, MD, to discuss recent FDA approvals of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu) for the management of HER2-positive breast cancer. Dr Geyer is a professor of medicine and chief of Malignant Hematology and Medical Oncology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hillman Cancer Center in Pennsylvania.On May 15, 2026, the FDA approved T-DXd for the neoadjuvant treatment of adult patients with HER2-positive stage II or III breast cancer, as determined by an FDA-authorized test, followed by a taxane, trastuzumab (Herceptin), and pertuzumab (Perjeta); the regulatory agency simultaneously approved post-neoadjuvant T-DXd for the treatment of adult patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who have residual invasive disease after neoadjuvant HER2-targeted treatment.In our exclusive interview, Dr Geyer discussed the significance of these approvals, key data from the pivotal trials, and how these new indications for T-DXd are shaking up the HER2-positive breast cancer treatment paradigm.
Drs. Waks and Sammons discuss how new long-term data and key updates in the NCCN Guidelines® are reshaping treatment strategies for HER2+ breast cancer in both early-stage and metastatic settings. They highlight the growing role of T-DXd, including its benefits, risks, and optimal patient selection, alongside how to sequence it with other HER2-directed therapies like pertuzumab and T-DM1.
In this interview, discover discuss key findings from the DESTINY-Breast09 trial and their implications for clinical practice, including practical advice for oncologists exploring treatment sequencing strategies with T-DXd.
CME credits: 0.25 Valid until: 01-06-2027 Claim your CME credit at https://reachmd.com/programs/cme/chairpersons-perspective-her2-in-solid-tumors-from-pathology-to-personalized-treatment-plans/54582/ Dr. Kathleen Moore reviews the clinical significance of HER2 expression across diverse solid tumors and its role in guiding treatment decisions. She outlines HER2 testing methodologies, including immunohistochemistry (IHC), to identify patients with advanced solid tumors who may benefit from HER2-targeted antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs). Dr. Moore summarizes key data from trials such as DESTINY-PanTumor02, DESTINY-Lung01, and DESTINY-CRC02 that supported tumor-agnostic approval of trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) for previously treated metastatic HER2-positive (IHC 3+) solid tumors, along with strategies for proactive monitoring and management of ADC-associated adverse events.=
Welcome back to the Oncology Brothers podcast! In this episode, we were joined by Dr. Erika Hamilton from the Sarah Cannon Cancer Research Institute to discuss the latest advancements in breast cancer treatment following ESMO Breast 2026. Listen us on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/31BXhY9FM4gPWG10WgE11o Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oncology-brothers-practice-changing-cancer-discussions/id1653340966 Follow us on social media: X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers Website: https://oncbrothers.com/ We dived into key studies and recent FDA approvals, including: The exciting approval of Vepdegestrant from the VERITAC-2 study for ESR1-mutated breast cancer. The importance of ovarian function suppression in premenopausal patients, even with the advent of oral SERDs. Updates on HER2-positive disease treatments, including the newly approved T-DXd in neoadjuvant settings and the implications of de-escalation strategies. Insights from the SATEEN and BRE-354 studies on the use of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) after previous ADC treatments. A look at the Dato-DXd and Sacituzumab in frontline triple-negative breast cancer and how to choose between them. Join us as we unpack these critical findings and their implications for clinical practice. Don't forget to check out our other episodes for more treatment algorithms and conference highlights. Stay tuned for ASCO 2026, and remember, we are the Oncology Brothers! #ESMO2026, #ESR1mutation, #BreastCancerResearch, #PrecisionMedicine, #OncologyBrothers
The FDA has been a bunch of busy bees with new approvals: 1. Sonrotoclax, an exciting new BCL2 inhibitor approved for 3rd-line Mantle Cell Lymphoma 2. An all PO regimen of decitabine/cedazuridine + venetoclax is approved for AML. 3. Zenoctuzumab gets an FDA approval for cholangiocarcinoma with an efficacy patient population = 19 4. T-DXd is a good drug and continues to pile on FDA approvals 5. Adjuvant atezolizumab in bladder cancer is approved in conjunction with ctDNA serial monitoring to determine who gets treatment Check out the Oncology Insights Newsletter: www.kelleycpharmd.com/newsletter-oncopharm
Send us Fan MailPaper Discussed in this Episode:Spatial omics and AI for clinically actionable cancer biomarkers. Reitsam NG. PLoS Med 2026; 23(4): e1005049.Episode Summary: In this deep dive, we explore how artificial intelligence and spatial omics are fundamentally rewriting the rules of cancer diagnostics. We break down a 2026 editorial that challenges a deceptively simple question driving modern oncology: Is a tumor "positive" or "negative" for a biomarker? As targeted cancer therapies evolve, this binary thinking is failing us. We discuss why mapping where and how much of a therapeutic target exists is crucial, and how AI is stepping in to solve the reproducibility issues human pathologists face when making borderline diagnostic calls.In This Episode, We Cover:• The Illusion of "Positive" vs. "Negative": Why the basic premise of modern cancer therapies—like antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs)—often falls apart in reality when we ignore the spatial heterogeneity of a tumor.• The Power of Computational Pathology: How AI is transforming subjective, qualitative estimates into continuous, reproducible data, scaling the quantification of complex biomarkers like PD-L1 and TROP2.• "Virtual" Proteomics: The fascinating concept of using AI models to infer high-dimensional spatial information and immune maps directly from standard, routine H&E stained slides.• The HER2 Bottleneck: A real-world look at the breast cancer drug T-DXd, which now demands pathologists distinguish between "HER2-low" and "HER2-ultralow". While human agreement drops below 70% at these fuzzy decision boundaries, AI steps up with a staggering ~97% sensitivity.• Three Shifts for the Future: Why clinical trials and routines must adopt continuous measures (like percentage of expressing cells), demand longitudinal repeat testing at disease progression, and utilize adaptive trial platforms.• Bridging the Gap to Reality: The massive hurdles preventing widespread adoption—such as equipment costs exceeding $250,000 and massive data storage needs. We discuss why a hybrid workflow that bolsters routine pathology with deployable AI is the best path forward to prevent widening global health disparities.Key Takeaway: The future of precision oncology isn't just about finding new drug targets; it's about fundamentally changing how we measure them. By moving away from rigid binary thresholds and using AI to map the continuous, spatial reality of tumors, we can unlock the true potential of targeted therapies. However, achieving this diagnostic ecosystem requires overcoming significant financial and systemic hurdles—such as updating reimbursement pathways and proficiency testing—to ensure these life-saving insights are accessible across all healthcare settings.Support the showGet the "Digital Pathology 101" FREE E-book and join us!
Breast Cancer Briefing, hosted by Sara Nunnery, MD, MSCI, a breast medical oncologist and the director of Breast Cancer Research at Tennessee Oncology in Nashville, is a podcast series that breaks down the latest news in breast cancer research, one conversation at a time.In today's episode, filmed live onsite at the 43rd Annual Miami Breast Cancer Conference, Dr Nunnery sat down with Kelly E. McCann, MD, PhD, a breast medical oncologist in the University of California system.Their conversation centered around the evolving HER2-positive breast cancer treatment paradigm. The experts highlighted that although this disease was once associated with a poor prognosis, targeted therapies like trastuzumab (Herceptin) have revolutionized management, making these cancers highly curable.They noted the role of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu), an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that delivers chemotherapy directly to cancer cells and uses a bystander effect to kill neighboring malignant cells. The phase 3 DESTINY-Breast11 trial (NCT05113251) evaluated T-DXd in the neoadjuvant setting for patients with high-risk, HER2-positive early breast cancer. Results showed significantly higher pathological complete response rates with T-DXd followed by docetaxel, trastuzumab, and pertuzumab (Perjeta) compared with standard chemotherapy. Responses were even more pronounced in patients with hormone receptor–negative disease.Furthermore, they spotlighted the phase 3 DESTINY-Breast05 trial (NCT04622319), which examined T-DXd as adjuvant therapy for high-risk patients with residual HER2-positive disease. In this study, T-DXd generated an improvement in invasive disease–free survival compared with standard ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla). They noted that a significant benefit of T-DXd is its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, offering the potential for preventing brain metastases. However, the experts expressed caution regarding interstitial lung disease, a potentially fatal adverse effect associated with T-DXd. Because of this risk, patients who receive T-DXd require frequent, expensive CT monitoring, which Nunnery and McCann explained can pose logistical and insurance challenges in standard practice.Although adjuvant T-DXd has been added to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Clinical Practice Guidelines for HER2-positive breast cancer, the neoadjuvant regimen has not yet been included, likely awaiting more mature survival data. Both oncologists conclude that although ADC-associated toxicities require vigilant management, these treatment advancements provide powerful new tools for potentially curing high-risk patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.
Drs. Isaacs and Traina discuss DESTINY-Breast09, where first‑line T‑DXd + pertuzumab clearly outperforms the CLEOPATRA regimen in progression-free survival for metastatic HER2+ breast cancer. They focus on the dilemma of when to use T‑DXd: earlier, for maximal efficacy, or later, to protect quality of life and manage ILD and cardiac risks.
Welcome to the Oncology Brothers podcast! In this episode, we dived deep into the current treatment landscape for frontline HER2-positive gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) and gastric cancer. Listen us on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/31BXhY9FM4gPWG10WgE11o Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oncology-brothers-practice-changing-cancer-discussions/id1653340966 Follow us on social media: X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers Website: https://oncbrothers.com/ Join us as we welcome Dr. Sunnie Kim from the University of Colorado and Dr. Samuel Cytryn from Memorial Sloan Kettering, who shared their insights on the latest advancements in HER2-targeted therapies. We discussed the pivotal TOGA and KEYNOTE-811, the promising data from the HERIZON-GEA01 study featuring Zanidatamab, and the implications of these findings for clinical practice. Key topics included: Current standard of care for HER2-positive GEJ and gastric cancer The role of PD-L1 status in treatment decisions Mechanisms and efficacy of Zanidatamab compared to traditional therapies Management of side effects, including diarrhea and infusion-related reactions Future directions in HER2-targeted therapies, including T-DXd based on the DESTINY Gastric-04 trial Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more updates on treatment algorithms, FDA approvals, and conference highlights! Accreditation/Credit Designation Physicians' Education Resource®, LLC is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. Physicians' Education Resource®, LLC designates this enduring material for a maximum of 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. Acknowledgment of Commercial Support This activity is supported by an educational grant from Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Link to gain CME credits from this activity: https://www.gotoper.com/courses/new-precision-strategies-for-her2-gea-interpreting-new-data-to-inform-clinical-practice
In this minisode, we break down the latest update to ASCO's living guideline for stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) without driver mutations — and what it means for clinicians on the front lines of care.We're drawing on a conversation with Dr. Joshua Reuss, thoracic medical oncologist at Georgetown University and co-chair of ASCO's Living Guidance Committee, who helped explain the key changes, the remaining uncertainties, and where the field is heading.What changed — and why now? This was a scheduled comprehensive review, not triggered by a single trial or approval. The committee revisited existing recommendations and incorporated emerging data, even when it didn't clear the bar for a formal change in recommendation level.Why this guideline is especially complex Unlike driver-positive NSCLC, where a mutation points clearly to a targeted therapy, the driver mutation–negative guideline must address a wide, heterogeneous population — split by histology (nonsquamous vs. squamous) and three PD-L1 tiers, resulting in six distinct patient subsets, each with its own evidence base.Molecular testing moves to the top A key structural change: comprehensive molecular testing is now front and center in the guideline, reinforcing that confirming the absence of a driver mutation is just as critical as finding one. Starting immunotherapy before results return can create serious problems — if a driver mutation surfaces later, switching to targeted therapy may carry significant toxicity risks.New in the toolkit: Teliso-V Telisotuzumab vedotin (Teliso-V), a MET-targeted antibody-drug conjugate, has been added to the guideline following its accelerated FDA approval for patients with high MET protein overexpression. It joins trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) in the subsequent-line ADC space — and its inclusion further underscores the need for thorough molecular and protein expression testing.What we still don't know The honest answer to "which frontline regimen is best for my patient?" is: we don't know yet. Ongoing trials like INSIGNA are tackling whether chemo is necessary in high PD-L1 expressers. Co-mutations like STK11 and KEAP1 are being explored as biomarkers for dual checkpoint blockade strategies, though a recent prospective study (NIPPON) added caution — increased toxicity without a clear efficacy signal.One to watch: ivonescimab This bispecific antibody co-targeting PD-1 and VEGF is generating buzz, with data from China suggesting it may outperform pembrolizumab alone. Dr. Reuss calls it potentially practice-changing — if the global data hold up.The takeaway The guideline won't hand you one answer. It's designed to give clinicians the evidence they need to make the best decision for the individual patient in front of them.
In this episode of the Oncology Brothers podcast, we dived deep into the evolving landscape of HER2-positive breast cancer treatment following the significant advancements made in 2025. Joined by Dr. Virginia Kaklamani from UT Health San Antonio, we discussed the latest data from SABCS 2025 and pivotal trials such as DESTINY-Breast09, which have led to new treatment approvals and strategies. Listen us on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/31BXhY9FM4gPWG10WgE11o Follow us on social media: • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers • Website: https://oncbrothers.com/ Key topics included: • The treatment algorithm for early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer, including the APT trial and the role of trastuzumab. • Insights into neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapies, including the implications of the neoCARHP trial regimen and the potential of T-DXd. • The impact of recent studies in metastatic HER2-positive disease, including the approval of T-DXd plus pertuzumab and the promising results from the PATINA trial. • A discussion on managing side effects and the importance of patient quality of life during treatment. Join us for an informative conversation that highlights the latest advancements in HER2-positive breast cancer care and how they can be applied in clinical practice. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review to help us reach more healthcare professionals who can benefit from these discussions! #HER2Positive, #BreastCancer, #SABCS25, #TDXd, #BreastCancerTreatment, #OncologyBrothers
In this episode of the Oncology Brothers podcast, we dived deep into the recent FDA approval of T-DXd (trastuzumab deruxtecan) plus Pertuzumab for the treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. Joined by Dr. Sara Tolaney, the lead author of the DESTINY-Breast 09 study, where we discussed the findings that show a significant improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) from 26.9 months to 40.7 months, with a hazard ratio of 0.56. Key topics included: • The design and findings of the DESTINY-Breast09 trial • Comparison with traditional treatment regimen THP (trastuzumab, pertuzumab, and taxane) • The implications of these findings for clinical practice • The role of maintenance therapy and the potential for personalized treatment strategies • Common side effects associated with T-DXd and pertuzumab, including ILD (Interstitial Lung Disease) Join us as we explore the future of HER2-positive breast cancer treatment and the exciting developments that are changing the landscape for patients. Follow us on social media: • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers • Website: https://oncbrothers.com/ Don't forget to subscribe for more insights on treatment algorithms, FDA approvals, and conference highlights! #HER2positiveBreastCancer, #TrastuzumabDeruxtecan, #DestinyBreast09, #MetastaticBreastCancer, #OncologyBrothers
Dr. Sonam Puri discusses the full update to the living guideline on stage IV NSCLC with driver alterations. She shares a new overarching recommendation on biomarking testing and explains the new recommendations and the supporting evidence for first-line and subsequent therapies for patients with stage IV NSCLC and driver alterations including EGFR, MET, ROS1, and HER2. Dr. Puri talks about the importance of this guideline and rapidly evolving areas of research that will impact future updates. Read the full living guideline update "Therapy for Stage IV Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer With Driver Alterations: ASCO Living Guideline, Version 2026.3.0" at www.asco.org/thoracic-cancer-guidelines TRANSCRIPT This guideline, clinical tools and resources are available at www.asco.org/thoracic-cancer-guidelines. Read the full text of the guideline and review authors' disclosures of potential conflicts of interest in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO-25-02822 Brittany Harvey: Hello and welcome to the ASCO Guidelines podcast, one of ASCO's podcasts delivering timely information to keep you up to date on the latest changes, challenges, and advances in oncology. You can find all the shows, including this one, at asco.org/podcasts. My name is Brittany Harvey, and today I'm interviewing Dr. Sonam Puri from Moffitt Cancer Center, co-chair on "Therapy for Stage IV Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer with Driver Alterations: ASCO Living Guideline, Version 2026.3.0." It's great to have you here today, Dr. Puri. Dr. Sonam Puri: Thanks, Brittany. Brittany Harvey: And then just before we discuss this guideline, I'd like to note that ASCO takes great care in the development of its guidelines and ensuring that the ASCO Conflict of Interest Policy is followed for each guideline. The disclosures of potential conflicts of interest for the guideline panel, including Dr. Puri, who has joined us here today, are available online with the publication of the guideline in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which is linked in the show notes. So then, to dive into the content that we're here today to talk about, Dr. Puri, this living clinical practice guideline for systemic therapy for patients with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer with driver alterations is updated on an ongoing basis. So, what data prompted this latest update to the recommendations? Dr. Sonam Puri: So Brittany, non-small cell lung cancer is one of the fastest-moving areas in oncology right now, particularly when it comes to targeted therapy for driver alterations. New data are emerging continuously from clinical trials, regulatory approvals, real-world experience, which is exactly why these are living guidelines. The goal is to rapidly integrate important advances as they happen, rather than waiting for years for a traditional update. Since the last full update of the ASCO Stage IV Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Guideline with Driver Alterations published in 2024, there have been seven new regulatory approvals and changes in first-line therapy for some driver alterations. [This version] of the "Stage IV Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Guidelines with Driver Alterations" represents a full update, which means that the panel reviewed and refreshed every applicable section of the guideline to reflect the most current evidence across therapies including sequencing and clinical decision-making. This is to ensure that clinicians have up-to-date practical guidelines that keep pace with how quickly the field is evolving. Brittany Harvey: Absolutely. As you mentioned, this is a very fast-moving space and this full update helps condense all of those versions that the panel reviewed before into one document, along with additional approvals and new trials that you reviewed during this time period. So then, the first aspect of the guideline is there's a new overarching recommendation on biomarker testing. Could you speak a little bit to that updated recommendation? Dr. Sonam Puri: Yeah, definitely. So the panel has discussed and provided recommendations on comprehensive biomarker testing and its importance in all patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer. Ideally, biomarker testing should include a broad-based next-generation sequencing panel, rather than single-gene tests, along with immunohistochemistry for important markers such as PD-L1, HER2, and MET. These results really drive treatment decisions, both in frontline settings for all patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer and in subsequent line settings for patients with non-small cell lung cancer harboring certain targetable alterations. Specifically in the frontline setting, it helps determine whether a patient should receive upfront targeted therapy or immunotherapy-based approach. We now have strong data that shows that complete molecular profiling results before starting first-line therapy is associated with better overall survival and actually more cost-effective care. Using both tissue and blood-based testing can improve likelihood of getting actionable results in a timely way, and we've also provided guidance on platforms that include RNA sequencing, which are specifically helpful for identifying gene fusions that might be otherwise missed with other platforms. On the flip side, outside of a truly resource-limited setting, single-gene PCR testing really should not be routine anymore. This is what the panel recommends. It's less sensitive and inefficient and increases the risk of missing important actionable alterations. Brittany Harvey: Understood. I appreciate you reviewing that recommendation. It really helps identify critical individual factors to match the best treatment option to each individual patient. So then, following that recommendation, what are the updated recommendations on first-line therapy for patients with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer with a driver alteration? Dr. Sonam Puri: Since the last full update in 2024, there have been four additional interim updates which were published across 2024 and 2025. Compared to the last version, there have been several updates which have been included in this full update. One of the most important shifts has been in first-line treatment of patients with non-small cell lung cancer harboring the classical, or what we call as typical, EGFR mutation. The current version of the recommendation is based on the updated survival data from the phase III FLAURA2 and MARIPOSA studies, based on which the panel recommended to offer either osimertinib combined with platinum-pemetrexed chemotherapy or the combination of amivantamab plus lazertinib in the first-line treatment of classical EGFR mutations. And these recommendations, as I mentioned, are grounded in the results of the FLAURA2 and MARIPOSA trials, both of which demonstrated improvement in progression-free survival and overall survival compared to osimertinib alone in patients with common EGFR mutations. That being said, the panel actually spent significant time discussing the toxicities associated with these treatments as well. These combination approaches come with higher toxicity, longer infusion time, increased treatment frequency. So while combination therapy is now recommended as preferred, the panel has recommended that osimertinib monotherapy remains a reasonable option, particularly for patients with poor performance status and for those who are not interested in treatment intensification after knowing the risks and benefits. Brittany Harvey: Absolutely. It's important to consider both those benefits and risks of those adverse events that you mentioned to match appropriately individualized patient care. So then, beyond those recommendations for first-line therapy, what is new for second-line and subsequent therapies? Dr. Sonam Puri: So this is a section that saw several major updates, particularly again in the EGFR space. The first was an update on treatment after progression on osimertinib for patients with classical EGFR mutation. Here the panel recommends the combination of amivantamab plus chemotherapy, and this recommendation was based on the phase III MARIPOSA-2 trial, which compared amivantamab plus chemotherapy with chemotherapy alone with progression-free survival as the primary endpoint. The study met its primary endpoint, showing an improvement in median PFS with the combination of amivantamab plus chemotherapy compared to chemotherapy alone. And as expected, the combination was associated with higher toxicity. So, although the panel recommends this regimen, the panel emphasizes that patients should be counseled on the side effects which may be moderate to severe with the combination therapy approach. In addition, a new recommendation was added for patients who are not candidates for amivantamab plus chemotherapy. In those cases, platinum-based chemotherapy with or without continuation of osimertinib may be offered, and the option of continuing osimertinib with chemotherapy was recommended and supported by data from a recently presented phase III COMPEL study, which randomized 98 patients with EGFR exon 19 deletion or L858R-mutated advanced non-small cell lung cancer who had experienced no CNS progression on first-line osimertinib, and these patients were randomized to receive platinum-pemetrexed chemotherapy with osimertinib or placebo. Although this study was small, it demonstrated a PFS benefit with continuation of osimertinib with chemotherapy, and this approach may be appropriate for patients without CNS progression who prefer or require alternatives to more intensive treatment strategies. Next was an update on options for patients with EGFR-mutated lung cancer after progression on osimertinib and platinum-based chemotherapy. Here the panel recommended that for patients whose disease has progressed after both osimertinib and platinum-based chemotherapy, a new drug known as datopotamab deruxtecan can be offered as a treatment option. And this treatment recommendation was based on evaluation of pooled data from the TROPION-Lung01 and TROPION-Lung05 study, in which in the pooled analysis about 114 patients with EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer were treated with Dato-DXd, 57% of whom had received three or more prior lines of treatment, and what was observed was an overall response rate of 45% with a median duration of response of 6.5 months. So definitely promising results. Next, we focused on updates to subsequent therapy options for patients with another type of EGFR mutation known as EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations. In this section, the panel added sunvozertinib as a subsequent line option after progression on platinum-based chemotherapy with or without amivantamab. Sunvozertinib is an oral, irreversible, and selective EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor with efficacy demonstrated in the phase II WU-KONG6 study conducted in Chinese patient population. In this study, amongst 104 patients with platinum-pretreated EGFR exon 20 mutated non-small cell lung cancer, the observed response rate was 61%. Staying in the EGFR space, the panel added a recommendation for patients with acquired MET amplification following progression on EGFR TKI therapy. In these situations, the panel recommended that treatment may be offered with osimertinib in combination with either tepotinib or savolitinib. As our listeners may know, MET amplification occurs in approximately 10% to 15% of patients with EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer when they progress on third-generation EGFR TKIs, and detection of MET amplification is done with various methods, such as tissue-based methods like FISH, NGS, and IHC, as well as ctDNA-based NGS with variable cut-offs. Over the last few years, several studies have informed this recommendation. I'm going to be discussing some of them. In the phase II ORCHARD trial, 32 patients with MET-amplified non-small cell lung cancer after progression on first-line osimertinib were evaluated, where the combination of osimertinib plus savolitinib achieved an overall response rate of 47% with a duration of response of 14.5 months. More recently, the phase II SAVANNAH trial reported outcomes in 80 patients with MET-amplified tumors after progression on osimertinib, and in this patient population, the combination of savolitinib and osimertinib achieved an overall response rate of 56% with a median PFS of 7.4 months. And lastly, the phase II single-arm INSIGHT 2 trial assessed the efficacy of osimertinib plus tepotinib in patients with advanced EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer who had disease progression following first-line osimertinib therapy. And in this study, in a cohort of 98 patients with MET-amplified tumors confirmed by central testing, the overall response rate with the combination was 50% with a duration of response of 8.5 months. So definitely informing this guideline recommendation. Next, we had an update on recommendation in patients with ROS1-rearranged non-small cell lung cancer. For patients with ROS1-rearranged non-small cell lung cancer, the panel recommended specifically for patients who progressed after first-line ROS1 TKIs, the addition of taletrectinib as a new option alongside repotrectinib. And this recommendation was based on analysis of the results of the TRUST-I and TRUST-II studies, which showed that amongst 113 tyrosine kinase inhibitor-pretreated patients, taletrectinib achieved a confirmed overall response rate of 55.8% with a median duration of response of 16.6 months and a median PFS of 9.7 months, a very promising agent. Finally, for patients with HER2 exon 20 mutated non-small cell lung cancer, the panel added two new oral HER2 tyrosine kinase inhibitors, zongertinib and sevabertinib, as options in addition to T-DXd and after exposure to T-DXd. These recommendations are based on early phase data from two trials: the phase I Beamion LUNG-01 study, which evaluated zongertinib, and the phase I/II SOHO-01 study that evaluated sevabertinib. In this study, zongertinib demonstrated an overall response rate of 71% in previously treated patients, with an overall response rate of 48% amongst patients who had received prior HER2-directed ADCs including T-DXd. Sevabertinib in its early phase study showed an overall response rate of 64% in previously treated but HER2 therapy-naive patients, and an overall response rate of 38% in patients previously exposed to HER2-directed therapy. The panel believes that both agents had manageable toxicity profile and represent meaningful new options for this patient population. Brittany Harvey: Certainly, it's an active space of research, and I appreciate you reviewing the evidence underpinning all of these recommendations for our listeners. So, it's great to have these new options for patients in the later-line settings. And given all of these updates in both the first and the later-line settings, what should clinicians know as they implement this latest living guideline update, and how do these changes impact patients with non-small cell lung cancer? Dr. Sonam Puri: Some great questions, Brittany. I think for clinicians when implementing this update, I think about two practical steps. First is reiterating the importance of comprehensive biomarker testing. That is the only way to identify key drivers and resistance mechanisms that we are now targeting. And second, picking a first-line strategy that balances efficacy and toxicity and patient preference for your specific patient. I think informed decision-making, shared decision-making is more important than any time right now. It has always been important, but definitely very important now. For patients, this guideline brings recommendations on more personalized treatment options for both first-line and post-progression settings, which potentially means better outcomes. But it is also very important for our patients to continue to have informed conversations about side effects, time commitment, and what matters most to them with their providers. The panel in this version of the guideline specifically acknowledges the real-world barriers that prevent patients from receiving guideline-concordant therapy, including challenges with access to comprehensive molecular testing and treatment availability, and the panel emphasizes on the importance of shared decision-making, and we provide practical discussion points to help clinicians navigate these conversations with the patient. In addition, the panel has also addressed common real-world clinical complexities, such as treating elderly or frail patients, managing multiple chronic conditions, considerations around pregnancy and fertility, and certain disease scenarios such as oligoprogression or oligometastatic disease. And where available, the guideline summarizes this existing data to support informed individual decision-making in these complex situations. Brittany Harvey: Shared decision-making is really paramount, especially with all of the options and weighing the risks and benefits and considering the individual circumstances of each patient that comes before a clinician. We've talked a lot about all of the new studies that the panel has reviewed, but what other studies or areas of research is the panel examining for future updates to this living guideline as it continues to be updated on an ongoing basis? Dr. Sonam Puri: Yes, definitely, so much to look forward to, right? Looking ahead, the panel is closely monitoring several rapidly evolving areas that are likely to shape future updates of the guideline. This includes emerging data from ongoing later-phase studies, particularly the studies that are evaluating these new targeted agents moving to earlier lines of therapy, alongside studies evaluating additional combination strategies or more refined approaches to treatment sequencing. We're also closely watching advances in biomarker testing, the evolving understanding of resistance mechanisms, development of new targets, and promising therapeutic agents. I think ultimately the living guideline exists to help clinicians and patients navigate this rapidly evolving field, and we would like to ensure that scientific advances are rapidly translated into better, more personalized patient care. Brittany Harvey: Definitely. We'll look forward to those updates from those ongoing trials and future areas of research that you mentioned to provide better options for patients with non-small cell lung cancer and a driver alteration. So I want to thank you so much for your work to rapidly and continuously update this guideline, and thank you for your time today, Dr. Puri. Dr. Sonam Puri: Thanks so much. Thanks so much for the opportunity. Brittany Harvey: And finally, thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in to the ASCO Guidelines podcast. To read the full guideline, go to www.asco.org/thoracic-cancer-guidelines. You can also find many of our guidelines and interactive resources in the free ASCO Guidelines app available in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. There's also a companion episode with Dr. Reuss on the related living guideline on stage IV non-small cell lung cancer without driver alterations that listeners can find in their feeds as well. And if you've enjoyed what you've heard today, please rate and review the podcast and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.
Featuring perspectives from Prof Giuseppe Curigliano, Prof Nadia Harbeck, Dr Ian E Krop, Dr Nancy U Lin and Dr Joyce O'Shaughnessy, including the following topics: Introduction (0:00) Considerations in the Care of Patients with Localized HER2-Positive Breast Cancer — Prof Harbeck (1:39) Case: A woman in her mid 50s presents with locally advanced ER-positive, HER2-positive breast cancer — Alan B Astrow, MD (12:52) Case: A woman in her mid 40s with ER-positive, HER2-positive Stage II breast cancer s/p neoadjuvant TCHP with residual disease receives adjuvant T-DM1 but discontinues due to neuropathy — Laila Agrawal, MD (20:02) Previously Untreated HER2-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer (mBC) — Prof Curigliano (25:10) Case: A woman in her early 80s presents with de novo metastatic (bone-only) ER-positive, HER2-positive breast cancer — Zanetta S Lamar, MD (35:03) Optimal Management of Brain Metastases in Patients with HER2-Positive Breast Cancer — Dr Lin (46:20) Case: A woman in her early 60s with ER-positive, HER2-positive breast cancer develops a cerebellar metastasis while receiving adjuvant anastrozole after prior anti-HER2 therapy — Justin Favaro, MD, PhD (59:41) Case: A woman in her early 40s with ER-negative, HER2-positive mBC develops a headache shortly after neoadjuvant TCHP, surgery and postneoadjuvant T-DM1 and is found to have an isolated 4-cm brain metastasis — Dr Agrawal (1:05:36) Selection and Sequencing of Therapy for Relapsed/Refractory HER2-Positive mBC in the Absence of CNS Involvement — Dr Krop (1:12:00) Case: A woman in her early 40s with ER-positive, HER2-positive mBC receives THP (docetaxel/trastuzumab/pertuzumab) and maintenance tucatinib with trastuzumab/pertuzumab on a clinical trial and now has disease progression — Yanjun Ma, MD, PhD (1:23:04) Tolerability Considerations with HER2-Targeted Therapies — Dr O'Shaughnessy (1:29:32) Case: A woman in her mid 60s presents with localized ER-negative, HER2-positive infiltrating ductal carcinoma — Erik Rupard, MD (1:46:06) Case: A woman in her early 70s with recurrent ER-positive, HER2-positive mBC receives trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) and has concerning pulmonary symptoms but without findings on diagnostic imaging — Kimberly Ku, MD Case: A woman in her mid 40s with ER-positive, HER2-positive breast cancer metastatic to the brain and lung who received multiple prior treatments responds to T-DXd but develops Grade 1 interstitial lung disease — Richard Zelkowitz, MD (1:49:49) CME information and select publications
Featuring perspectives from Dr Javier Cortés, Dr Rita Nanda, Prof Peter Schmid and Dr Priyanka Sharma, including the following topics: Introduction (0:00) Case: A woman in her early 80s with multiple comorbidities and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) develops bone-only metastases 4 months after declining capecitabine for post-neoadjuvant residual disease — Justin Favaro, MD, PhD (1:50) Case: A woman in her mid 70s with ER-negative, HER2-low (IHC 1+), PIK3CA-mutated, PD-L1-positive metastatic breast cancer (mBC) after receiving 3 cycles of neoadjuvant paclitaxel/carboplatin/pembrolizumab, which was discontinued — Alan Astrow, MD (6:47) Previously Untreated Metastatic TNBC (mTNBC) — Prof Schmid (10:47) Case: A woman in her early 80s with multiregimen-recurrent ER-positive, HER2-low (IHC 1+) ESR1-mutant mBC receives sacituzumab govitecan — Jennifer Yannucci, MD (27:19) Case: The role of datopotamab deruxtecan (Dato-DXd) for patients with ER-positive, HER2-low mBC who experienced disease progression on prior trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) — Ranju Gupta, MD; Case: A woman in her late 70s with bilateral recurrence in the lungs of ER-negative, HER2-low (IHC 1+) breast cancer (PD-L1 TPS 20%) receives Dato-DXd with durvalumab on protocol — Yanjun Ma, MD, PhD (31:35) Integrating Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) into the Management of Endocrine-Resistant Hormone Receptor-Positive mBC — Dr Sharma (36:31) Case: A woman in her early 70s with recurrent ER-negative, HER2-low (IHC 2+) mBC receives sacituzumab govitecan and achieves complete remission — Dr Gupta; Case: Management of neutropenia associated with sacituzumab govitecan — Gigi Chen, MD (50:30) Case: A woman in her late 60s with recurrent ER-negative, HER2-low (IHC 1+) mBC (HER2 V69L mutation) receives T-DXd and achieves a complete response but develops Grade 1 interstitial lung disease — Dr Gupta; Case: Management of T-DXd-related side effects — Laila Agrawal, MD (54:10) Selection and Sequencing of Therapy for Relapsed/Refractory mTNBC — Dr Nanda (58:59) Case: A woman in her early 40s with multiregimen-recurrent ER-positive, HER2-low mBC who has experienced severe nausea with past treatments is about to initiate T-DXd — Atif M Hussein, MD, MMM (1:12:40) Tolerability and Other Practical Considerations with ADCs and Other Cytotoxic Agents for mBC — Dr Cortés (1:18:10) CME information and select publications
Dr. Monty Pal and Dr. Hope Rugo discuss advances in antibody-drug conjugates for various breast cancer types as well as treatment strategies in the new era of oral SERDs for HR-positive breast cancer. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Monty Pal: Hello, and welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Monty Pal. I'm a medical oncologist and vice chair of academic affairs here at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr. Hope Rugo, an internationally renowned breast medical oncologist and my colleague here at City of Hope, where she leads the Women's Cancers Program and serves as division chief of breast medical oncology. Dr. Rugo is going to share with us exciting advances in antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) that are expanding treatment options in various breast cancer types. She'll also address some of the complex questions arising in the new era of oral SERDs (selective estrogen receptor degraders) that are revolutionizing treatment in the hormone receptor-positive breast cancer space. Our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode. Dr. Rugo, welcome, and thanks so much for being on the podcast today. Dr. Hope Rugo: Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Dr. Monty Pal: So, I'm going to switch to first names if you don't mind. The first topic is actually a really exciting one, Hope, and this is antibody-drug conjugates. I don't know if I've ever shared this with you, but I actually started my training at UCLA, I was a med student and resident there, and it was in Dennis Slamon's lab. I worked very closely with Mark Pegram and a handful of others. This is right around the time I think a lot of HER2-directed therapies were really evolving initially in the clinics. Now we've got antibody-drug conjugates. Our audience is well-familiar with the mechanism there but tell us about how ADCs have really started to reshape therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer. Dr. Hope Rugo: Yeah, I mean, this is a really great place to start. I mean, we have had such major advances in breast cancer just this year, I think really changing the paradigm of treating patients. But HER2-positive disease, we've been used to having sequenced success of new agents. And I think the two biggest areas where we've made advances in HER2-positive disease, which were remarkably advanced this year in 2025, have been in antibody-drug conjugates with trastuzumab deruxtecan and with new oral tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) that have less of a target on EGFR and more on HER2, so they have an overall more tolerable toxicity profile and therefore a potentially better efficacy in the clinic. At least that's what we're seeing with these new strategies that we couldn't really pursue in the past because of toxicities of the oral TKIs. So, although our topic is ADCs, I'm going to include the TKI because it's so important in our thinking about treating HER2-positive disease. In the metastatic setting, we've seen these remarkable improvements in progression-free and overall survival in the second-line setting with T-DXd, or trastuzumab deruxtecan, compared to T-DM1. And then sequencing ADCs with giving T-DXd after T-DM1 was better than an oral tyrosine kinase or a trastuzumab combination with standard chemotherapy. That was DESTINY-Breast03 and DESTINY-Breast02. So, then we've had other trials since then, and T-DXd has moved into the early-stage setting, which I'll talk about in just a moment. But the next big trial for T-DXd in HER2-positive disease was moving it to the first-line setting to supplant what has become an established treatment for now quite a long time: the so-called CLEOPATRA regimen, which used the combined antibodies trastuzumab, pertuzumab with a taxane as first-line therapy. And then we've proceeded on with maintenance with ongoing HP for patients with responding or stable disease. And we'd seen long-term data showing, you know, at 8 years there was a group of patients whose cancers had never progressed and continued improved overall survival. So, T-DXd was studied in DESTINY-Breast09, either alone or in combination with pertuzumab compared to THP. The patient population had received a little bit more prior treatment, but interestingly, not a lot compared to CLEOPATRA. And they designed the trial to be T-DXd continued until progression with or without pertuzumab versus THP, which would go for six cycles and then stop around six cycles, and then stop and continue HP. Patients who had hormone receptor-positive disease could use hormone therapy, and this is one of the issues with this dataset because, surprisingly in this dataset and one other I'll mention, very few patients took hormone therapy. And even in the maintenance trial, the HER2CLIMB-05, less than 50% took hormone therapy as maintenance. This is kind of shocking to me and highlights an area of really important education, that outcome is improved when you add endocrine therapy for hormone receptor-positive HER2-positive metastatic disease in the maintenance phase, and it's a really important part of treatment. But suffice it to say, you know, you're kind of studying continued chemo versus stopping chemo in maintenance. And T-DXd, as we all expected, in combination with pertuzumab was superior to THP in terms of progression-free survival, really remarkably improved. And you could stop the chemo with toxicity, but most people continued it with T-DXd. Again, not a lot of people got hormone therapy, which is an issue, and you stop the chemo in the control arm. So, this has brought up a lot of interest in trying to use T-DXd as an induction and then go to maintenance, much as we do with the CLEOPATRA regimen with hormone therapy. But it brings up another issue. So first, T-DXd is superior; it's a great treatment. Not everybody needs to have it because we don't know whether it's better to give T-DXd first or second with progression - that we need a little bit longer follow-up. But just earlier this week, interestingly, the third week of December, the U.S. FDA approved T-DXd in the DESTINY-Breast09 approach with pertuzumab. So as I mentioned earlier, there was a T-DXd-alone arm; that arm has not yet reported. So very interesting, we don't know if you need pertuzumab or not. So what about the maintenance? That's the other area where we've made a huge advance here. So, we all want to stop chemo and we want to stop T-DXd. You don't want somebody being nauseated for two years while they're on treatment, and also there's a small number of patients with mostly de novo metastatic HER2-positive disease who are cured of their disease. We'd like to expand that, and I think these new drugs give us the opportunity to improve the number of patients who might be cured from metastatic disease. So the first maintenance study we saw was adding palbociclib, the CDK4/6 inhibitor, to endocrine therapy and HP, essentially. There, we had a remarkable improvement in progression-free survival difference of 15.2 months: 29 to 44 months, really huge. At San Antonio this year, we saw data with this oral tyrosine kinase inhibitor tucatinib, already showed it was great in a triplet, but as maintenance in combination with HP, it showed also a remarkable improvement in progression-free survival. But the numbers were all shifted down. So in PATINA, the control arm was in the 24-month range; here it was the tucatinib-HP arm that was in the 25 months and 16 months for control. So there was a differential benefit in ER-negative and ER-positive disease. So I think we're all thinking that our ideal approach moving forward would be to give T-DXd to most patients, we see how they do, and treat to best response. And then, stop the T-DXd, start HP, trastuzumab, pertuzumab for ER-negative, with tucatinib for ER-positive with palbociclib. We also have early data that suggests that both approaches may reduce the development of brain metastases, an issue in HER2-positive disease, and delay time to progression of brain metastases as seen in HER2CLIMB-05 in very early data - small numbers, but still quite intriguing that you might delay progression of brain metastases with tucatinib that clearly has efficacy in the brain. So, I think that this is a hugely exciting advance for our patients, and these approaches are quickly moving into the early stage setting. T-DXd compared to standard chemo, essentially followed by THP, so a sequenced approach resulted in more pathologic complete responses than a standard THP-AC-type neoadjuvant therapy. T-DXd alone for eight cycles wasn't better, and that's interesting. We still need the sequenced non-cross-resistant chemo. But I think even more importantly, the data from DESTINY-Breast05 looking at T-DXd versus T-DM1 in patients with residual disease after neoadjuvant HER2-targeted therapy showed a remarkable improvement in invasive disease-free survival with T-DXd versus T-DM1, and quite early. It was a high-risk population, higher risk than the T-DM1 trial with KATHERINE, but earlier readout with a remarkable improvement in outcome. We expect to be FDA approved sometime in the first half of 2026. So then we'll get patients who've already had T-DXd who get metastatic disease. But my hope is that with T-DXd, maybe with tucatinib in the right group of patients or even sequenced in very high-risk disease, that we could cure many more patients with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer and cure a subset, a greater subset of patients with de novo metastatic disease. Dr. Monty Pal: That's brilliant. And you tackled so many questions that I was going to follow up with there: brain metastases, etc. That was sort of looming in my mind. I mean, general thoughts on an ADC versus a TKI in the context of brain mets? Dr. Hope Rugo: Yeah, it's an interesting question because T-DXd has shown quite good efficacy in this setting. And tucatinib, of course, had a trial where they took patients with new brain mets, so a larger population than we've seen yet for the T-DXd trials, and saw that not only did they delay progression of brain metastases and result in shrinkage of existing untreated brain mets, but that patients who develop a new brain met, they could stay on the same assigned treatment. They got stereotactic radiation, and then the patients who were on tucatinib with trastuzumab and capecitabine had a further delay in progression of brain mets compared to those on the placebo arm, even after treatment of a new one that developed on treatment. So, I think it's hard. I think most of us for a lot of brain mets might start with the tucatinib approach, but T-DXd is also a very important treatment. You know, you're kind of trading off a diarrhea, some liver enzyme elevations with tucatinib versus nausea, which you really have to work on managing because it can be long-delayed nausea, and this risk of ILD, interstitial lung disease, that's about 12%, with most but not all trials showing a mortality rate from interstitial lung disease of just under 1 percent. In the early-stage setting, it was really interesting to see that with T-DXd getting four cycles in the neoadjuvant setting, a lot less ILD noted than the patients who got up to 14 cycles, as I think they got a median of 10 cycles in the post-surgical setting, there was a little bit more ILD. But I think we're going to be better and better at finding this earlier and preventing mortality by just stopping drug and treating earlier with steroids. Dr. Monty Pal: And this ILD issue, it always seems to resurface. There are drugs that I use in my kidney cancer clinic, everolimus, common to perhaps the breast cancer clinic as well, pembrolizumab, where I think the pattern of pneumonitis is quite different, right? What is your strategy for recognizing pneumonitis early in this context? Dr. Hope Rugo: Well, it is, and you know, having done the very early studies in everolimus where we gave it in the neoadjuvant setting and we're like, "Hmm, the patient came in with a cough. What's going on?" You know, we didn't know. And you have mouth sores, you know, we were learning about the drug as we were giving it. What we don't do with everolimus and CDK4/6 inhibitors, for example, is grade 1 changes like radiation pneumonitis, we don't stop, we don't treat it. We only treat for symptoms. But because of the mortality associated with T-DXd, albeit small, we stop drug for grade 1 imaging-only asymptomatic pneumonitis, and some of us treat with a half dose of steroids just to try and hasten recovery. We've actually now published or presented a couple of datasets from trials, a pooled analysis and a real-world analysis, that have looked at patients who were retreated after grade 1 pneumonitis or ILD and tolerated drug very well and none of them died of interstitial lung disease, which was really great to see because you can retreat safely and some of these patients stayed on for almost a year benefiting from treatment. So, there's a differential toxicity profile with these drugs and there are risk factors which clearly have identified those at higher risk: prior ILD, for example. A French group said smoking; other people haven't found that, maybe because they smoked more in France, I don't know. And being of Japanese descent is quite interesting. The studies just captured that you were treated in Japan, but I think it's probably being of Japanese descent with many drugs that increases your risk of ILD. And, you know, older patients, people who have hypoxia, those are the patients. So, how do we do this? With everolimus, we don't have specific monitoring. But for T-DXd we do; we do every nine weeks to start with and then every 12 weeks CT scans because most of the events occur relatively early. Somebody who's older and at higher risk now get the first CT at six weeks. Dr. Monty Pal: This is super helpful. And I have to tell you, a lot of these drugs are permeating the bladder cancer space which, you know, is ultimately going to be a component of my practice, so thank you for all this. We could probably stay on this topic of HER2-positive disease forever. I'm super interested in that space still. But let me shift gears a little bit and talk about triple-negative breast cancer and this evolving space of HR-positive, HER2-low breast cancer. I mean, tell us about ADCs in that very sort of other broad area. Dr. Hope Rugo: So triple-negative disease is the absolute hardest subset of disease that we have to treat because if you don't have a great response in the early stage setting, the median survival is very short, you know, under two years for the majority of TNBCs, with the exception of the small percentage of low proliferative disease subsets. The co-question is what do we do for these patients and how do we improve outcome? And sacituzumab govitecan has been one strategy in the later line setting that was shown to improve progression-free and overall survival, the Trop-2 ADC. We had recently three trials presented with the two ADCs, sacituzumab govitecan and the other Trop-2 ADC that's approved for HR-positive disease, datopotamab deruxtecan. And they were studied in the first-line setting. Two trials with SG, sacituzumab govitecan, those trials, one was PD-L1 positive, ASCENT-04. That showed that SG with a checkpoint inhibitor was superior, so pembrolizumab was superior to the standard KEYNOTE-355 type of treatment with either a taxane or gemcitabine and carboplatin with pembrolizumab for patients who have a combined positive score for PD-L1, 10 or greater. So, these are patients who are eligible for a checkpoint inhibitor, and SG resulted in an improved progression-free survival. The interesting thing about that dataset is that few patients had received adjuvant or neoadjuvant checkpoint inhibitor, which is fascinating because we give it to everybody now. But access is an issue and timing of the study enrollment was an issue. The other thing which I think we've all really applauded Gilead for is that there was automatic crossover. So, you could get from the company, to try and overcome some of the enormous disparities worldwide in access to these life-saving drugs, you could get SG through the company for free once you had blinded independent central review confirmation of disease progression. Now, a lot of the people who got the SG got it through their insurance, they didn't bill the company, but 80 percent of patients in the control arm received SG in the second-line setting. So that impacts your ability to look at overall survival, but it's an incredibly important component of these trials. So then at ESMO, we saw the data from SG and Dato-DXd in the first-line metastatic setting for patients who either had PD-L1-negative disease or weren't eligible for an immunotherapy. For the Dato study, TROPION-Breast02, that was 10 percent of the patients who had PD-L1-positive disease but didn't get a checkpoint inhibitor, and for the ASCENT-03 trial population it was only 1 percent. Importantly, the trials allowed patients who relapsed within a year of receiving their treatment with curative intent, and the Dato study, TB-02, allowed patients who relapsed while on treatment or within the first six months, and that was 15 percent of the 20 percent of early relapsers. The ASCENT trial, ASCENT-03, had 20 percent who relapsed between 6 and 12 months. The drugs were better than standard of care chemotherapy, the ADCs in both trials, which is very nice. Different toxicity profiles, different dosing intervals, but better than standard of care chemotherapy in the disease that's hardest for us to treat. And importantly, when you looked at the subset of early relapsers, those patients also did better with the ADC versus chemotherapy, which is incredibly important. And we were really interested in that 15 percent of patients who had early relapse. I actually think that six months thing was totally contrived, invented, you know, categorization and doesn't make any sense, and we should drop it. But the early relapsers were 15 percent of TB-02 and Dato was superior to standard of care chemo. We like survival, but the ASCENT trial again allowed the crossover to an approved ADC that improved survival and 80 percent of patients crossed over. In the Dato trial, they did not allow crossover, they didn't provide Dato, which isn't approved for TNBC but is for HR-positive disease, and they didn't allow, of course, pay for SG. So very few patients actually crossed over in their post-treatment data and in that study, they were able to show a survival benefit. So actually, I think in the U.S. where we can use approved drugs already before there's a fixed FDA approval, that people are already switching to use SG or Dato in the first-line setting for metastatic TNBC that's both PD-L1 positive for SG and PD-L1 negative for both drugs. And I think understanding the toxicity profiles of the two drugs is really important as well as the dosing interval to try and figure out which drug to use. Dr. Monty Pal: Brilliant. Brilliant. Well, I'm going to shift gears a little bit. ADCs are a topic, again, just like HER2-positive disease we could stay on forever. Dr. Hope Rugo: Huge. Yes. Dr. Monty Pal: But we're going to shift gears to another massive topic, which is oral SERDs. In broad strokes, right, this utilization of CDK4/6 inhibitors in the context of HR-positive breast cancer is obviously, you know, a paradigm that's been well established at this point. Where do we sequence in oral SERDs? Where do they fit into this paradigm? Dr. Hope Rugo: Ha! This is a rapidly changing area; we keep changing what we're saying every other minute. And I think that there are three areas of great interest. So one is patients who develop ESR1 mutations that allow constitutive signaling through the estrogen receptor, even when there's not estrogen around, and that is a really important mutation that is subclonal; it develops under the pressure of treatment in about 40 percent of patients. And it doesn't happen when you first walk in the door. And what we've seen is that oral SERDs as single agents are better than standard single-agent endocrine therapy in that setting. The problem that we've had with that approach is that we're now really interested in giving targeted agents with our endocrine therapies, not just in the first-line setting where CDK4/6 inhibitors are our standard of care with survival benefit for ribociclib and, you know, survival benefit in subsets with other CDK4/6 inhibitors, and abemaciclib with a numeric improvement. So we give it first line. The question is, what do you do in the second-line setting? Because of the recent data, we now believe that oral SERDs should be really given with a targeted agent. And some datasets which were recently presented, which I think have helped us with that, have been EMBER-3 and then the most recently evERA BC, or evERA Breast Cancer, that looked at the oral SERD giredestrant with everolimus compared to standard of care endocrine therapy with everolimus, where 100 percent of patients received prior CDK4/6 inhibitor and showed a marked improvement in progression-free survival, including in the subsets of patients with a short response, 6-12 months of prior response to CDK4/6 inhibitor and in those who had a PIK3CA pathway mutation. The thing is that the benefit looks like it's much bigger in the ESR1 mutant population, although response was better, PFS wasn't better in the wild type. So, we're still trying to figure that out. We also saw EMBER-3 with imlunestrant and abemaciclib as a second line. Not everybody had had a prior CDK4/6 inhibitor; they compared it to imlunestrant alone, but still the data was quite striking and seemed to cross the need for ESR1 mutations. And then lastly, we saw data from the single arms of the ELEVATE trial looking at elacestrant with everolimus and abemaciclib and showed these really marked progression-free survival data, even though single-arm, that crossed the mutation status. At least for the everolimus combination, abemaciclib analysis is still to come in the mutated subgroups. But really remarkable PFS, much longer. Single-agent fulvestrant after CDK4/6 inhibitor AI has a PFS in like the three-month range and in some studies, maybe close to five months. These are all at 10-plus months and really looking very good. And so those questions are, is it ESR1 mutation alone? Is it all comers? We'd like all comers, right? We believe in the combination approach and we're learning more about combinations with drugs like capivasertib and other drugs as we move forward. Everybody now wants to combine their targeted agent with an oral SERD because they're clearly here to stay with quite remarkable data. The other issue, so the second issue in the metastatic setting is, does it make a difference if we change to an oral SERD before radiographic imaging evidence of progression? And that was the question asked in the SERENA-6 trial where patients had serial monitoring for the presence of ESR1 mutations in ctDNA. And those who had them without progression on imaging could be randomized to switch to camizestrant with the same CDK4/6 inhibitor or stay on their same AI CDK4/6 inhibitor. And they showed a difference in progression-free survival that markedly favored camizestrant. But interestingly, the people who were on the standard control arm had an ESR1 mutation, we think AIs don't work, they stayed on for nine more months. The patients who were on the camizestrant stayed on for more than 16 months. And they presented some additional subset data which showed the same thing: follow-up PFS data, PFS2, all beneficial in SERENA-6 at the San Antonio [Breast Cancer Symposium]. So, we're still a little bit unclear about that. They did quality of life, and pain was markedly improved. They had a marked delayed time to progression of pain in the camizestrant arm. So this is all a work in progress, trying to understand who should we switch without progression to an oral SERD based on this development of this mutation that correlates with resistance. And, you know, it's interesting because the median time to having a mutation was 18 months and the median time to switch was almost 24 months. And then there were like more than 3,000 patients who hadn't gotten a mutation, hadn't switched, and were still okay. So screening everybody is the big question, and when you would start and who you would change on and how this affects outcome. Patients didn't have access to camizestrant in the control arm, something we can't fix but we have experimental drugs. We're actually planning a trial, I hope in collaboration with the French group Unicancer, and looking at this exact question. You know, if you switch and you change the CDK4/6 inhibitor and then you also allow crossover, what will we see? Dr. Monty Pal: We're coming right to the tail end of our time here, and I could probably go on for another couple of hours with you here. But if you could just give us maybe one or two big highlights from San Antonio, any thoughts to leave our audience with here based on this recent meeting? Dr. Hope Rugo: Yeah, I mean, I talked about a lot of those new data already from San Antonio, and the one that I'd really like to mention which I think was, you know, there were a lot of great presentations including personalized screening presented from the WISDOM trial by my colleague Laura Esserman, fascinating and really a big advance. But lidERA was the big highlight, I think, outside of the HER2CLIMB-05 which I talked about earlier in HER2-positive disease. And this study looked at giredestrant, the oral SERD versus standard of care endocrine therapy as treatment for medium and high-risk early-stage breast cancer. And what they showed, which I think was really remarkable with just about a three-year median follow-up, was an improvement in invasive disease-free survival with a hazard ratio of 0.7. I mean, really quite remarkable and so early. It looked as though this was all driven by the high-risk group, which makes sense, not the medium risk, it's too early. And also that there was a bigger benefit in patients who were on tamoxifen compared to giredestrant versus AI, but for both groups, the confidence intervals didn't cross 1. There's even a trend towards overall survival, even though it's way too early. I think that, you know, really well-tolerated oral drug that could improve outcome in early-stage disease, this is the first advance we've seen in over two decades in the treatment of early-stage hormone receptor-positive disease with just endocrine therapy. I think we think that we don't want to give up CDK4/6 inhibitors because we saw a survival benefit with abemaciclib and a trend with giving ribociclib in the NATALEE trial. So we're thinking that maybe one approach would be to give CDK4/6 inhibitors and then switch to an oral SERD or to have enough data to be able to give oral SERDs with these CDK4/6 inhibitors for early-stage disease. And that's all in the works, you know, lots of studies going on. We're going to see a lot of data with both switching 8,000 patients with an imlunestrant switching trial, an elacestrant trial going on, and safety data with giredestrant with abemaciclib and soon to come ribociclib. So, this is going to change everything for the treatment of early-stage breast cancer, and I hope cure more patients of the most common subset of the most common cancer diagnosed in women worldwide. Dr. Monty Pal: Super exciting. It's just remarkable to hear how this has evolved since 25 years ago, which is really the last time I sort of dabbled in breast cancer. Thank you so much, Hope, for joining us today. These were fantastic insights. Appreciate you being on the ASCO Daily News Podcast and really want to thank you personally for your remarkable contribution to the field of breast cancer. Dr. Hope Rugo: Thank you very much, and thanks for talking with me today. Dr. Monty Pal: You got it. And thanks a lot to our listeners today as well. You'll find links to all the studies we discussed today in the transcript of this episode. Finally, if you value the insights that you hear today on the ASCO Daily News Podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinion of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Follow today's speakers: Dr. Monty Pal @montypal Dr. Hope Rugo @hoperugo Follow ASCO on social media: ASCO on X ASCO on Bluesky ASCO on Facebook ASCO on LinkedIn Disclosures: Dr. Monty Pal: Speakers' Bureau: MJH Life Sciences, IntrisiQ, Peerview Research Funding (Inst.): Exelixis, Merck, Osel, Genentech, Crispr Therapeutics, Adicet Bio, ArsenalBio, Xencor, Miyarsian Pharmaceutical Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Crispr Therapeutics, Ipsen, Exelixis Dr. Hope Rugo: Honoraria: Mylan/Viatris, Chugai Pharma Consulting/Advisory Role: Napo Pharmaceuticals, Sanofi, Bristol Myer Research Funding (Inst.): OBI Pharma, Pfizer, Novartis, Lilly, Merck, Daiichi Sankyo, AstraZeneca, Gilead Sciences, Hoffman La-Roche AG/Genentech, In., Stemline Therapeutics, Ambryx
Join us as we dive into the latest advancements in HER2-positive breast cancer from SABCS 2025. In this episode, we discussed key studies including DESTINY Breast-11 and DESTINY Breast-05, highlighting their implications for neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatments. We also explored the HER2CLIMB-05 trial and the recent approval of TDXD with pertuzumab in frontline settings for metastatic HER2-positive disease. Special guest Dr. Harold Burstein from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute shared his insights on the evolving landscape of HER2-positive breast cancer treatment, including the importance of patient selection and the management of side effects like interstitial lung disease (ILD). Tune in for a comprehensive recap of the latest data, treatment algorithms, and how these advancements are changing the lives of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and check out our other episodes for more updates on treatment options and conference highlights! Topics Covered: • DESTINY Breast-11 and its impact on neoadjuvant therapy • Insights from DESTINY Breast-05 on adjuvant treatment for high-risk residual disease • HER2CLIMB-05 trial findings and implications for metastatic disease • The role of T-DXd with pertuzumab in frontline settings • The PATINA trial and its significance for triple-positive metastatic breast cancer Follow us on social media: • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers • Website: https://oncbrothers.com/ Don't forget to like, subscribe, and check out our other episodes for more insights on treatment algorithms, recent approvals, and conference highlights! #SABCS2025 #HER2positive #DestinyTrials #OncologyBrothers #BreastCancer
Featuring perspectives from Dr Lisa A Carey and Dr Rita Nanda, including the following topics: Overview: Molecular basis of antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) toxicities — Sequencing of ADCs and mechanisms of resistance (0:00) Case: A woman in her late 60s with localized triple-negative breast cancer develops myocarditis during neoadjuvant therapy with chemotherapy/pembrolizumab — Richard Zelkowitz, MD (8:22) Case: A woman in her mid 70s with recurrent ER-negative, HER2-low, PD-L1-positive metastatic breast cancer (mBC) who experiences disease progression on nab paclitaxel/atezolizumab responds to sacituzumab govitecan — Ranju Gupta, MD (26:43) Case: A woman in her early 80s with recurrent ER-positive, HER2-low (IHC 1+) mBC experiences disease progression on trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd), then receives datopotamab deruxtecan and develops pulmonary symptoms — Laila Agrawal, MD (32:11) Data Review: T-DXd (37:51) Case: A woman in her early 70s with recurrent ER-positive, HER2-low (IHC 1+) mBC, including bladder metastases, experiences disease progression after palbociclib/letrozole, then capivasertib/fulvestrant, then nab paclitaxel — Justin Favaro, MD, PhD (44:02) Case: A woman in her late 70s with ER-positive, HER2-low mBC who experiences disease progression after 1 year of ribociclib/letrozole receives sacituzumab govitecan — Erik Rupard, MD (55:19) CME information and select publications
JCO PO author Dr. Shilpa Gupta at Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital shares insights into her article, "Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 3 (FGFR3) Alteration Status and Outcomes on Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICPI) in Patients with Metastatic Urothelial Carcinoma". Host Dr. Rafeh Naqash and Dr. Gupta discuss how FGFR3 combined with TMB emerged as a biomarker that may be predictive for response to ICPI in mUC. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Hello and welcome to JCO Precision Oncology Conversations, where we bring you engaging conversations with authors of clinically relevant and highly significant JCO PO articles. I'm your host, Dr. Rafeh Naqash, podcast editor for JCO Precision Oncology and Associate Professor at the OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center. Today I am excited to be joined by Dr. Shilpa Gupta, Director of Genitourinary Medical Oncology at the Cancer Institute and co-leader of the GU Oncology Program at the Cleveland Clinic, and also lead author of the JCO PO article titled "Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 3 Alteration Status and Outcomes on Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors in Patients With Metastatic Urothelial Carcinoma." At the time of this recording, our guest's disclosures will be linked in the transcript. Shilpa, welcome again to the podcast. Thank you for joining us today. Dr. Shilpa Gupta: Thank you, Rafeh. Honor to be here with you again. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: It is nice to connect with you again after two years, approximately. I think we were in our infancy of our JCO PO podcast when we had you first time, and it has been an interesting journey since then. Dr. Shilpa Gupta: Absolutely. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Well, excited to talk to you about this article that you published. Wanted to first understand what is the genomic landscape of urothelial cancer in general, and why should we be interested in FGFR3 alterations specifically? Dr. Shilpa Gupta: Bladder cancer or urothelial cancer is a very heterogeneous cancer. And while we find there is a lot of mutations can be there, you know, like BRCA1, 2, in HER2, in FGFR, we never really understood what is driving the cancer. Like a lot of old studies with targeted therapies did not really work. For example, we think VEGF can be upregulated, but VEGF inhibitors have not really shown definite promise so far. Now, FGFR3 receptor is the only therapeutic target so far that has an FDA approved therapy for treating metastatic urothelial cancer patients, and erdafitinib was approved in 2019 for patients whose tumors overexpressed FGFR3 mutations, alterations, or fusions. And in the landscape of bladder cancer, it is important because in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, about 70 to 80% patients can have this FGFR3. But as patients become metastatic, the alterations are seen in, you know, only about 10% of patients. So the clinical trials that got the erdafitinib approved actually used archival tumor from local cancer. So when in the real world, we don't see a lot of patients if we are trying to do metastatic lesion biopsies. And why it is important to know this is because that is the only targeted therapy available for our patients right now. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Thank you for giving us that overview. Now, on the clinical side, there is obviously some interesting data for FGFR3 on the mutation side and the fusion side. In your clinical practice, do you tend to approach these patients differently when you have a mutation versus when you have a fusion? Dr. Shilpa Gupta: We can use the treatment regardless of that. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: I recently remember I had a patient with lung cancer, squamous lung cancer, who also had a synchronous bladder mass. And the first thought from multiple colleagues was that this is metastatic lung. And interestingly, the liquid biopsy ended up showing an FGFR3-TACC fusion, which we generally don't see in squamous lung cancers. And then eventually, I was able to convince our GU colleagues, urologists, to get a biopsy. They did a transurethral resection of this tumor, ended up being primary urothelial and synchronous lung, which again, going back to the FGFR3 story, I saw in your paper there is a mention of FGFR3-TACC fusions. Anything interesting that you find with these fusions as far as biology or tumor behavior is concerned? Dr. Shilpa Gupta: We found in our paper of all the patients that were sequenced that 20% had the pathognomonic FGFR3 alteration, and the most common were the S249C, and the FGFR3-TACC3 fusion was in 45 patients. And basically I will say that we didn't want to generate too much as to fusion or the differences in that. The key aspect of this paper was that historically there were these anecdotal reports saying that patients who have FGFR alterations or mutations, they may not respond well to checkpoint inhibitors because they have the luminal subtype. And these were backed by some preclinical data and small anecdotal reports. But since then, we have seen that, and that's why a lot of people would say that if somebody's tumor has FGFR3, don't give them immunotherapy, give them erdafitinib first, right? So then we had this Phase 3 trial called the THOR trial, which actually showed that giving erdafitinib before pembrolizumab was not better. That debunked that myth, and we are actually reiterating that because in our work we found that patients who had FGFR3 alterations or fusions, and if they also have TMB-high, they actually respond very well to single agent immunotherapy. And that is, I think, very important because it tells us that we are not really seeing that so-called potential of resistance to immunotherapy in these patients. So to answer your question, yeah, we did see those differences, but I wouldn't say that any one marker is more prominent. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: The analogy is kind of similar to what we see in lung cancer with these mutations called STK11/KEAP1, which are also present in some other tumors. And one of the questions that I don't think has been answered is when you have in lung cancer, if you extrapolate this, where doublet or single agent immunotherapy doesn't do as well in tumors that are STK11 mutated. But then if you have a high TMB, question is does that TMB supersede or trump the actual mutation? Could that be one reason why you see the TMB-high but FGFR3 altered tumors in your dataset responding or having better outcomes to immunotherapy where potentially there is just more neoantigens and that results in a more durable or perhaps better response to checkpoint therapy? Dr. Shilpa Gupta: It could be. But you know, the patients who have FGFR alterations are not that many, right? So we have already seen that just patients with TMB-high respond very well to immunotherapy. Our last podcast was actually on that, regardless of PD-L1 that was a better predictor of response to immunotherapy. So I think it's not clear if this is adding more chances of response or not, because either way they would respond. But what we didn't see, which was good, that if they had FGFR3, it's not really downplaying the fact that they have TMB-high and that patients are not responding to immunotherapy. So we saw that regardless, and that was very reassuring. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: So if tomorrow in your clinic you had an individual with an FGFR3 alteration but TMB-high, I guess one could be comfortable just going ahead with immunotherapy, which is what the THOR trial as you mentioned. Dr. Shilpa Gupta: Yes, absolutely. And you know, when you look at the toxicity profiles of pembrolizumab and erdafitinib, really patients really struggle with using the FGFR3 inhibitors. And of course, if they have to use it, we have to, and we reserve it for patients. But it's not an easy drug to tolerate. Currently the landscape is such that, you know, frontline therapy has now evolved with an ADC and immunotherapy combinations. So really if patients progress and have FGFR3 alterations, we are using erdafitinib. But let's say if there were a situation where a patient has had chemotherapy, no immunotherapy, and they have FGFR3 upregulation and TMB-high, yes, I would be comfortable with using only pembrolizumab. And that really ties well together what we saw in the THOR trial as well. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Going to the clinical applications, you mentioned a little bit of this in the manuscript, is combination therapies. You alluded to it a second back. Everything tends to get combined with checkpoint therapy these days, as you've seen with the frontline urothelial, pembrolizumab with an ADC. What is the landscape like as far as some of these FGFR alterations are concerned? Is it reasonable to combine some of those drugs with immune checkpoint therapy? And what are some of the toxicity patterns that you've potentially seen in your experience? Dr. Shilpa Gupta: So there was indeed a trial called the NORSE trial. It was a randomized trial but not a comparative cohort, where they looked at FGFR altered patients. And when they combined erdafitinib plus cetrelimab, that did numerically the response rates were much higher than those who got just erdafitinib. So yeah, the combination is definitely doable. There is no overlapping toxicities. But unfortunately that combination has not really moved forward to a Phase 3 trial because it's so challenging to enroll patients with such kind of rare mutations on large trials, especially to do registration trials. And since then the frontline therapy has evolved to enfortumab vedotin and pembrolizumab. I know there is an early phase trial looking at a next generation FGFR inhibitor. There is a triplet combination looking in Phase 1 setting with a next generation FGFR inhibitor with EV-pembro. However, it's not a randomized trial. So you know, I worry about such kinds of combinations where we don't have a path for registration. And in the four patients that have been treated, four or five patients in the early phase as a part of basket trial, the toxicities were a lot, you know, when you combine the EV-pembro and an FGFR3 inhibitor, we see more and more toxicity. So the big question is do we really need the "kitchen sink" approach when we have a very good doublet, or unless the bar is so high with the doublet, like what are we trying to add at the expense of patient toxicity and quality of life is the big question in my mind. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Going back to your manuscript specifically, there could be a composite biomarker. You point out like FGFR in addition to FGFR TMB ends up being predictive prognostic there. So that could potentially be used as an approach to stratify patients as far as treatment, whether it's a single agent versus combination. Maybe the TMB-low/FGFR3 mutated require a combination, but the TMB-high/FGFR mutated don't require a combination, right? Dr. Shilpa Gupta: No, that's a great point, yeah. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: But again, very interesting, intriguing concepts that you've alluded to and described in this manuscript. Now, a quick take on how things have changed in the bladder cancer space in the last two years. We did a podcast with you regarding some biomarkers as you mentioned two years back. So I really would like to spend the next minute to two to understand how have things changed in the bladder cancer space? What are some of the exciting things that were not there two years back that are in practice now? And how do you anticipate the next two years to be like? Maybe we'll have another podcast with you in another two years when the space will have changed even more. Dr. Shilpa Gupta: Certainly a lot has happened in the two years, you know. EV-pembro became the universal frontline standard, right? We have really moved away from cisplatin eligibility in metastatic setting because anybody would benefit from EV-pembro regardless of whether they are candidates for cisplatin or not, which historically was relevant. And just two days ago, we saw that EV-pembro has now been approved for localized bladder cancer for patients who are cisplatin ineligible or refusing. So, you know, this very effective regimen moving into earlier setting, we now have to really think of good treatment options in the metastatic setting, right? So I think that's where a lot of these novel combinations may come up. And what else we've seen is in a tumor agnostic trial called the DESTINY-PanTumor trial, patients who had HER2 3+ on immunohistochemistry, we saw the drug approval for T-DXd, and I think that has kind of reinvigorated the interest in HER2 in bladder cancer, because in the past targeting HER2 really didn't work. And we still don't know if HER2 is a driver or not. And at ESMO this year, we saw an excellent study coming out of China with DV which is targeting HER2, and toripalimab, which is a Chinese checkpoint inhibitor, showing pretty much similar results to what we saw with EV-pembro. Now, you know, not to do cross-trial comparisons, but that was really an amazing, amazing study. It was in the presidential session. And I think the big question is: does that really tell us that HER2-low patients will not benefit? Because that included 1+, 2+, 3+. So that part we really don't know, and I think we want to study from the EV-302 how the HER2 positive patients did with EV and pembro. So that's an additional option, at least in China, and hopefully if it gets approved here, there is a trial going on with DV and pembro. And lastly, we've seen a very promising biomarker, like ctDNA, for the first time in bladder cancer in the adjuvant setting guiding treatment with adjuvant atezolizumab. So patients who were ctDNA positive derived overall survival and recurrence-free survival benefit. So that could help us select moving forward with more studies. We can spare unnecessary checkpoint inhibitors in patients who are not going to benefit. So I think there is a lot happening in our field, and this will help do more studies because we already have the next generation FGFR inhibitors which don't have the toxicities that erdafitinib comes with. And combining those with these novel ADCs and checkpoint inhibitors, you know, using maybe TMB as a biomarker, because we really need to move away from PD-L1 in bladder cancer. It's shown no utility whatsoever, but TMB has. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Well, thank you so much, Shilpa, for that tour de force of how things have changed in bladder cancer. There used to be a time when lung and melanoma used to lead this space in terms of the number of approvals, the biomarker development. It looks like bladder cancer is shifting the trend at this stage. So definitely exciting to see all the new changes that are coming up. I'd like to spend another minute and a half on your career. You've obviously been a leader and example for many people in the GU space and beyond. Could you, for the sake of our early career especially, the trainees and other listeners, describe how you focused on things that you're currently leading as a leader, and how you shaped your career trajectory over the last 10 years? Dr. Shilpa Gupta: That's a really important question, Rafeh, and you and I have had these discussions before, you know, being an IMG on visas like you, and being in different places. I think I try to make the most of it, you know, instead of focusing on the setbacks or the negative things. Like tried to grab the opportunities that came along. When I was at Moffitt, got to get involved with the Phase 1 trial of pembrolizumab in different tumor types. And just keeping my options open, you know, getting into the bladder cancer at that time when I wanted to really do only prostate, but it was a good idea for me to keep my options open and got all these opportunities that I made use of. I think an important thing is to, like you said, you know, have a focus. So I am trying to focus more on biomarkers that, you know, we know that 70% patients will respond to EV-pembro, right? But what about the remaining 30%? Like, so I'm really trying to understand what determines hyperprogressors with such effective regimens who we really struggle with in the clinic. They really don't do well with anything we give them after that. So we are doing some work with that and also trying to focus on PROs and kind of patient-reported outcomes. And a special interest that I've now developed and working on it is young-onset bladder cancer. You know, the colorectal cancer world has made a lot of progress and we are really far behind. And bladder cancer has historically been a disease of the elderly, which is not the case anymore. We are seeing patients in their 30s and 40s. So we launched this young-onset bladder cancer initiative at a Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network meeting and now looking at more deep dive and creating a working group around that. But yeah, you know, I would say that my philosophy has been to just take the best out of the situation I'm in, no matter where I am. And it has just helped shape my career where I am, despite everything. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Well, thank you again. It is always a pleasure to learn from your experiences and things that you have helped lead. Appreciate all your insights, and thank you for publishing with JCO PO. Hopefully we will see more of your biomarker work being published and perhaps bring you for another podcast in a couple of years. Dr. Shilpa Gupta: Yeah, thank you, Rafeh, for the opportunity. And thanks to JCO PO for making these podcasts for our readers. So thanks a lot. Dr. Rafeh Naqash: Thank you for listening to JCO Precision Oncology Conversations. Don't forget to give us a rating or review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find all ASCO shows at asco.org/podcast. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. DISCLOSURES Dr. Shilpa Gupta Stock and Other Ownership Interests: Company: BioNTech SE, Nektar Consulting or Advisory Role: Company: Gilead Sciences, Pfizer, Merck, Foundation Medicine, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Medarex, Natera, Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson/Janssen Research Funding: Recipient: Your Institution Company: Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, Merck, Roche/Genentech, EMD Serono, Exelixis, Novartis, Tyra Biosciences, Pfizer, Convergent Therapeutics, Acrivon Therapeutics, Flare Therapeutics, Amgen Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Company: Pfizer, Astellas Pharma, Merck
Featuring an interview with Dr John V Heymach, including the following topics: Differentiating factors among various HER2 alterations in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) (0:00) Activity of targeted agents across HER2 alterations in NSCLC (4:06) Available data with zongertinib and sevabertinib for HER2-mutant NSCLC (20:39) Case: A man in his late 40s with HER2-mutant NSCLC receives multiple lines of therapy, including trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) and zongertinib (29:23) Case: A woman in her mid 50s with HER2-mutant NSCLC receives zongertinib with durable response (34:23) Case: A woman in her late 50s with HER2-mutant NSCLC receives multiple lines of therapy, including sevabertinib and T-DXd (39:53) Investigational approaches in HER2-mutant NSCLC (46:31) CME information and select publications
Featuring an interview with Dr Priyanka Sharma, including the following topics: T-DXd versus trastuzumab emtansine for high-risk HER2-positive primary breast cancer with residual invasive disease after neoadjuvant therapy: Interim analysis of the DESTINY-Breast05 trial (0:00) Geyer C et al. Trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) vs trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) in patients (pts) with high-risk human epidermal growth factor receptor 2–positive (HER2+) primary breast cancer (BC) with residual invasive disease after neoadjuvant therapy (tx): Interim analysis of DESTINY-Breast05. ESMO 2025;Abstract LBA1. DESTINY-Breast11 trial: Neoadjuvant T-DXd alone or followed by paclitaxel/trastuzumab/pertuzumab for high-risk HER2-positive localized breast cancer (5:42) Harbeck N et al. DESTINY-Breast11: Neoadjuvant trastuzumab deruxtecan alone (T-DXd) or followed by paclitaxel + trastuzumab + pertuzumab (T-DXd-THP) vs SOC for high-risk HER2+ early breast cancer (eBC). ESMO 2025;Abstract 291O. Trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) and pertuzumab versus a taxane, trastuzumab and pertuzumab for HER2-positive advanced or metastatic breast cancer: Additional analyses of the DESTINY-Breast09 trial (10:00) Loibl S et al. Trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) + pertuzumab (P) vs taxane + trastuzumab + pertuzumab (THP) for patients (pts) with HER2+ advanced/metastatic breast cancer (a/mBC): Additional analyses of DESTINY-Breast09 in key subgroups of interest. ESMO 2025;Abstract LBA18. CME information and select publications
Two Onc Docs, hosted by Samantha A. Armstrong, MD, and Karine Tawagi, MD, is a podcast dedicated to providing current and future oncologists and hematologists with the knowledge they need to ace their boards and deliver quality patient care. Dr Armstrong is a hematologist/oncologist and assistant professor of clinical medicine at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis. Dr Tawagi is a hematologist/oncologist and assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago. In this episode, OncLive On Air® partnered with Two Onc Docs to feature a comprehensive review of the current management of metastatic breast cancer, emphasizing evidence-based treatment strategies across molecular subtypes, toxicity management, and patient-centered care. Drs Armstrong and Tawagi discussed that the primary goals of metastatic breast cancer therapy include prolonging survival, controlling symptoms, minimizing toxicity, improving quality of life, and incorporating patients' goals and preferences into care decisions. Their discussion also highlighted the importance of recognizing when transitioning to best supportive care is most appropriate. For estrogen receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer, they noted that first-line therapy includes an aromatase inhibitor or fulvestrant (Faslodex) combined with a CDK4/6 inhibitor, with ovarian function suppression for premenopausal patients. PARP inhibitors are recommended for patients with BRCA1/2-positive disease. In visceral crisis, chemotherapy remains the category 1 recommendation. Second-line treatment options include therapies guided by repeat molecular testing. fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu) is approved for patients with HER2-low disease. For HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, first-line treatment consists of a taxane plus pertuzumab (Perjeta) and trastuzumab (Herceptin), followed by T-DXd in the second-line setting. For triple-negative metastatic breast cancer, therapy depends on PD-L1 status. The episode concluded by underscoring the role of bone-protective agents such as zoledronic acid, pamidronate, or denosumab (with dental clearance to prevent osteonecrosis). Key takeaways emphasize tailoring therapy to molecular subtype, recognizing drug-specific toxicities, and prioritizing patient-centered decision-making in the management of metastatic breast cancer.
In this episode, Sara Tolaney, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses sequencing strategies after progression in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. She reviews current second-line standards, considerations for patients with brain metastases, and emerging therapies in the post–T-DXd setting.Let us know what you thought of this week's episode on Twitter: @physicianswkly Want to share your medical expertise, research, or unique experience in medicine on the PW podcast? Email us at editorial@physweekly.com! Thanks for listening!
Welcome back to the Oncology Brothers podcast! In this episode, Drs. Rohit & Rahul Gosain are joined by Dr. Joshua Sabari from the NYU Langone Cancer Center to discuss the exciting recent approval of Zongertinib, the first oral TKI for HER2-positive lung cancer. We dived deep into the prevalence of HER2 mutations in non-small cell lung cancer, the study design and findings from the Beamion LUNG-1 trial, and the implications of this new therapy in clinical practice. Dr. Sabari shared insights on the efficacy of Zongertinib, including impressive response rates and progression-free survival data, as well as its side effect profile compared to other treatments like trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd). Key topics covered in this episode: • Overview of HER2 mutations in lung cancer • Study design and results of the Beamion LUNG-1 • Comparison of Zongertinib and T-DXd in treatment settings • Management of common side effects associated with Zongertinib • Future directions for HER2-targeted therapies Join us for this informative discussion as we explore the latest advancements in lung cancer treatment and what they mean for patients and clinicians alike. Don't forget to subscribe for more episodes on new approvals, side effect management, and practice-changing data in oncology! Follow us on social media: • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers • Website: https://oncbrothers.com/
Featuring an interview with Dr Shannon N Westin, including the following topics: Biomarker testing and utility in ovarian cancer (OC) (0:00) Selection of a PARP inhibitor for the treatment of OC (9:18) Addition of immunotherapy to up-front treatment of OC (15:50) Utility of minimal residual disease and circulating tumor DNA assays in OC (17:10) Selection of treatment for recurrent OC (21:46) Clinical decision-making involved with PARP inhibitors for endometrial cancer (EC) (28:22) Adjuvant therapy for EC (32:28) Utility of lenvatinib/pembrolizumab in EC (35:08) Clinical findings supporting the potential use of selinexor for EC (39:42) Key findings involving trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) for HER2-positive gynecologic cancers (43:22) Management of adverse effects associated with T-DXd (49:49) CME information and select publications
In this episode, CancerNetwork® spoke with breast oncologists Heather McArthur, MD; Erika Hamilton, MD; Hope Rugo, MD; and Paolo Tarantino, MD, PhD, about advances in breast cancer. These developments included recent drug approvals and ongoing research for therapeutic approaches, particularly in the areas of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and CDK4/6 inhibitors, based on presentations they gave at the 25th Annual International Congress on the Future of Breast Cancer (IBC) East in New York City. Initially, McArthur, Komen Distinguished Chair in Clinical Breast Cancer Research at the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, discussed immunotherapy use in high-risk triple-negative and HER2-positive disease, the evolving role of adjuvant CDK4/6 inhibition in HER2-negative breast cancer, and potentially transformative advancements in early breast cancer treatment. She highlighted the FDA approval for pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in early-stage triple-negative breast cancer, promising clinical trials in estrogen receptor (ER)–positive high-risk early-stage breast cancer, and data from an investigator-initiated trial to treat HER2-positive disease. Additionally, she highlighted an 8.5% improvement in pathological complete response with pembrolizumab added to immunotherapy in the phase 3 KEYNOTE-756 trial (NCT03725059), adding that a further event-free survival benefit may complicate the landscape for CDK4/6 inhibition based on lung and liver toxicities associated with the coadministration of these inhibitors with immunotherapy.1 McArthur expressed further excitement for ADC-based combinations for triple-negative disease, as well as in the high-risk residual disease setting. In addition, she highlighted potential advancements in de-escalation strategies and further considerations for ADCs in the HER2-positive and hormone receptor (HR)–positive spaces. Then, Hamilton, director of Breast Cancer and Gynecologic Cancer Research at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, highlighted emerging therapies for early breast cancer, as well as her use of datopotamab deruxtecan-dlnk (dato-DXd; Datroway) and fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu) given their recent approvals in various breast cancer subtypes. She also touched upon challenges with respect to the implementation of new therapies for early breast cancer into clinical practice. She initially highlighted new data from the phase 3 VERITAC-2 trial (NCT05654623) presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.2 Specifically, findings showed that vepdegestrant, an oral proteolysis-targeting chimera (PROTAC), exhibited an efficacy advantage over fulvestrant (Faslodex) in patients with ESR1-mutant ER-positive, HER2-negative advanced or metastatic disease. Moreover, she highlighted data from the phase 3 DESTINY-Breast09 (NCT04784715) of T-DXd in various combinations for patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.3 Hamilton further highlighted her implementation of T-DXd into clinical practice, citing her use of the agent in patients with metastatic disease, including those with HER2-low and HER2-ultralow breast cancer. She further differentiated dato-DXd from T-DXd, suggesting that they were different classes of drugs due to their different targets: TROP2 vs HER2. She concluded by highlighting an unmet need regarding sustained benefit from endocrine therapy in HR-positive disease, as well as for ADC sequencing and mechanisms of resistance. Afterward, Rugo, division chief of Breast Medical Oncology, Women's Cancer Program Director, and professor in the Department of Medical Oncology and Therapeutics Research at City of Hope, discussed efficacy and safety considerations for CDK4/6 inhibitors in early breast cancer treatment. Specifically, she highlighted their high tolerability despite adverse effects and costs associated with their use. Rugo further touched upon a reduction of recurrence rates associated with CDK4/6 inhibition, although longer-term follow-up data were warranted to optimize the duration of therapy and elucidate survival outcomes. Finally, Tarantino, a research fellow at the Dana-Farber Institute, concluded by discussing sequencing strategies for ADCs, as well as which breast cancer settings or patient populations will experience the greatest impact with this treatment modality. Tarantino discussed his use of the “sandwich strategy,” where he switches the mechanism of action of treatment after using a TOPO1 ADC. Furthermore, Tarantino highlighted data from the DESTINY-Breast09 and phase 3 ASCENT-04 (NCT06100874) trials, which displayed the enhanced efficacy of 2 ADC combination therapies.4 He concluded by discussing future considerations for combining multiple ADCs. References 1. Cardoso F, O'Shaughnessy J, Liu Z, et al. Pembrolizumab and chemotherapy in high-risk, early-stage, ER+/HER2- breast cancer: a randomized phase 3 trial. Nat Med. 2025;31(2):442-448. doi:10.1038/s41591-024-03415-7 2. Hamilton E, De Laurentiis M, Jhaveri K, et al. Vepdegestrant, a PROTAC estrogen receptor (ER) degrader, vs fulvestrant in ER-positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)–negative advanced breast cancer: results of the global, randomized, phase 3 VERITAC-2 study. J Clin Oncol. 2025;43(suppl 17):LBA1000. doi:10.1200/JCO.2025.43.17_suppl.LBA1000 3. Tolaney S, Jiang Z, Zhang Q, et al. Trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) + pertuzumab (P) vs taxane + trastuzumab + pertuzumab (THP) for first-line (1L) treatment of patients (pts) with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2–positive (HER2+) advanced/metastatic breast cancer (a/mBC): interim results from DESTINY-Breast09. J Clin Oncol. 2025;43(suppl 17):LBA1008. 4. Tolaney SM, de Azambuja E, Kalinsky K, et al. Sacituzumab govitecan (SG) + pembrolizumab (pembro) vs chemotherapy (chemo) + pembro in previously untreated PD-L1–positive advanced triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC): Primary results from the randomized phase 3 ASCENT-04/KEYNOTE-D19 study. J Clin Oncol. 2025;43(suppl 17):LBA109. doi:10.1200/JCO.2025.43.17_suppl.LBA109
First-Line Therapy—Has the Standard of Care Shifted for Good?In this episode, Dr. Sara Tolaney, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses how DESTINY-Breast09 is redefining first-line treatment in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. She explores whether T-DXd plus pertuzumab should replace the long-standing THP regimen, the future role of induction-maintenance strategies, and open questions on optimal therapy duration. Let us know what you thought of this week's episode on Twitter: @physicianswkly Want to share your medical expertise, research, or unique experience in medicine on the PW podcast? Email us at editorial@physweekly.com! Thanks for listening!
Drs. Yuan and Callahan discuss data presented at ASCO 2025 about DESTINY-Breast06, SHR-A1811, and TQB2101, along with real-world data on rechallenging patients with T-DXd post grade 1 ILD.
BUFFALO, NY – June 27, 2025 – A new #research paper was #published in Volume 16 of Oncotarget on June 17, 2025, titled “Molecular landscape of HER2-mutated non-small cell lung cancer in Northeastern Brazil: Clinical, histopathological, and genomic insights.” In this study, researchers led by first authors Cleto Dantas Nogueira from the Federal University of Ceará and Argos Pathology Laboratory and Samuel Frota from Argos Pathology Laboratory, along with corresponding author Fabio Tavora from the previously mentioned institutions and Messejana Heart and Lung Hospital, investigated how HER2 gene mutations appear in cases of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in Northeastern Brazil. The team found that HER2 mutations showed significant genetic diversity and were often associated with other cancer-related genetic changes. These findings revealed diagnostic and treatment challenges in a population that is rarely studied, emphasizing the need for expanded access to molecular testing and targeted therapies. HER2 mutations are a known factor in several cancers, including breast and gastric cancers. In lung cancer—particularly NSCLC—these mutations are less common but remain clinically significant. Most existing research on HER2-mutated lung cancer focuses on high-income countries, leaving important gaps in knowledge about underrepresented regions such as Latin America. This study helps fill that gap by analyzing 13 patients with HER2-mutated NSCLC using clinical, pathological, and genomic data. The patients ranged in age from 34 to 82 years, and more than half were women. About half had never smoked. Their tumors often displayed complex genetic profiles, including additional mutations in genes such as TP53, KRAS, and STK11. The most common HER2 mutation identified was an insertion in exon 20, a known hotspot for activating mutations. “Trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) is the first HER2-targeted agent to show clinical efficacy in HER2-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (HER2m NSCLC).” Treatment strategies among the patients varied. Only one individual received HER2-targeted therapy. Most were treated with surgery, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or a combination of these approaches. Outcomes also differed, with some patients surviving for years and others dying within months of diagnosis. These findings reinforce the need for early diagnosis and improved access to advanced treatments, particularly in low-resource settings. The study emphasizes the value of comprehensive molecular profiling in NSCLC. Because HER2 mutations often occur alongside other genetic alterations, full genomic analysis is crucial for guiding treatment decisions. Yet, such testing is not always available. The researchers propose a tiered diagnostic approach, beginning with basic screening and expanding to more advanced tests when necessary, to enhance patient care. This study provides valuable insights into the molecular characteristics of HER2-mutated NSCLC in a Brazilian population, highlighting the complexity and clinical relevance of these alterations. Larger studies are needed to clarify the prevalence and prognostic significance of HER2 mutations, as well as their impact on treatment response and survival. This knowledge is essential for advancing effective HER2-targeted therapies. The findings also support broader implementation of international clinical guidelines in Latin America and highlight the critical need to include underrepresented populations in cancer research. DOI - https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.28737 Correspondence to - Fabio Tavora - stellacpak@outlook.com Video short - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr5R9iDBFFI To learn more about Oncotarget, please visit https://www.oncotarget.com. MEDIA@IMPACTJOURNALS.COM
In today's episode, supported by Daiichi Sankyo, we had the pleasure of speaking with Misako Nagasaka, MD, PhD, about the use of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu) in pretreated patients with HER2-mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Dr Nagasaka is an associate professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology and the Division of Medicine at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine. In our exclusive interview, Dr Nagasaka discussed current second-line treatment standards for patients with HER2-mutated NSCLC, how the use of T-DXd in this setting may evolve with the emergence of investigational agents, and the importance of integrating HER2 immunohistochemistry testing into clinical practice.
Dr. Shaalan Beg and Dr. Kristen Ciombor discuss practice-changing studies in GI cancers and other novel treatment approaches that were presented at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting. Transcript Dr. Shaalan Beg: Hello, I'm Dr. Shaalan Beg, welcoming you to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm a medical oncologist and an adjunct associate professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. There were some remarkable advances in gastrointestinal cancers that were presented at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting, and I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Kristen Ciombor to discuss some exciting GI data. Dr. Ciombor is the Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research and a co-leader of Translational Research and the Interventional Oncology Research Program at the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center. Our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode. Dr. Ciombor, it's great to have you on the podcast today. Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Thanks, Dr Beg. It's great to be here. Dr. Shaalan Beg: Alright, let's kick it off. Big year for GI cancers. We'll start off with LBA1. This was the ATOMIC study sponsored by NCI and the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) and the Alliance group. This is a randomized study of standard chemotherapy alone or combined with atezolizumab as adjuvant therapy for stage III mismatch repair deficient colorectal cancer. Dr. Kristen Ciombor: I think this study was really definitely practice-changing, as you can tell because it was a Plenary. But I do have some concerns in terms of how we're actually going to implement this and whether this is the final answer in this disease subtype. So, as you said, the patients were enrolled with stage III resected mismatch repair deficient colon cancer, and then they were randomized to either modified FOLFOX6 with or without atezolizumab. And that's where it starts to become interesting because not many of us give FOLFOX for 6 months like was done in this study. Obviously, the study was done over many years, so that was part of that answer, but also the patients received atezolizumab for a total of 12 months. So the question, I think, that comes from this abstract is, is this practical and is this the final answer? I do think that this is practice-changing, and I will be talking to my patients with resected mismatch repair deficient colon cancer about FOLFOX plus atezolizumab. I think the big question is, do these patients need chemotherapy? And can we do a neoadjuvant approach instead? And that's where we don't have all the answers yet. Dr. Shaalan Beg: Yeah, but it has been great to see immunotherapy make its way into the adjuvant space after having made such a big impact in the metastatic space, but still some unanswered questions in terms of the need for chemotherapy and then the duration of therapy, which I guess we'll have to stay tuned in for the next couple of years to to get a lot of those questions answered. Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Yeah, but a big congratulations to the study team, to the NCTN, the NCI. I mean, this is really a great example of federally funded research that needs to continue. So, great job by the study team. The DFS 10% difference is really very large and certainly a practice-changing study. Dr. Shaalan Beg: Yeah, and and sticking with colon cancer, and and this another federally funded study, but this time funded by a Canadian cancer clinical trials group was LBA3510. This is the CHALLENGE study. It's a randomized phase 3 trial of the impact of a structured exercise program on disease-free survival for stage III or high-risk stage II colon cancer. This study got a lot of buzz, a lot of mainstream press coverage, and a lot of discussions on what that means for us for the patients who we're going to be seeing next week in our clinic. What was your takeaway? Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Yeah, this is a really interesting study, and I was so glad to see it presented because this partially answers one of the questions that patients always have for us in clinic, right? You know, once they've completed their standard chemotherapy and surgery, what else can they do to help prevent recurrence? And so we've always known and sort of extrapolated that healthy lifestyle habits are good, but now we have data, particularly in these patients. Most of them were stage III colon cancer patients, those had high-risk stage II cancer. And basically, the goal was to increase their physical activity by at least 10 MET hours per week. So, my big question, of course, as I came into this presentation was, “Okay, what does that mean exactly? How does that translate to real life?” And really what the author presented and explained was that basically most patients could hit their target by adding a 45- to 60-minute brisk walk 3 to 4 times a week. So I think this is very approachable. Now, in the confines of the study, this was a structured exercise program, so it wasn't just patients doing this on their own. But I do think kind of extrapolating from that, that this is very achievable for most patients. And not only did this prevent recurrence of their prior cancer, but actually the rate of new primary cancer diagnoses, was less, which is really interesting, especially in the breast and prostate cancer. So this was a really interesting, and I think practice-changing study as well, especially given that this is something that most patients can do. Dr. Shaalan Beg: Yeah, and there was a lot of discussion in the hallways after the presentation in terms of how this really changes our existing practice because most folks already recommend exercise as a way for improving outcomes in cancer patients. So we've already been doing that. Now we have some data on how much it can impact the benefit. But there was some discussion about what the actual degree of impact was. There was a drop-off rate in terms of how long folks were able to stick with this exercise regimen. But you've seen this in clinic when someone have their surgery, they have their chemotherapy, they've been so intimately involved with the oncology world, with the oncology practice, and they somehow feel that they're being let loose into this mean, angry world without any guidance and they're looking for something to do. “What more can I do in terms of my lifestyle?” And then here we have very solid data, as solid as can be for an intervention like exercise, showing that there is an impact and you can give a prescription for exercise when someone wraps up their chemotherapy for colon cancer, thanks to the study. Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Yeah. It was a great study. Dr. Shaalan Beg: Moving to gastroesophageal cancer, another late-breaking abstract. This is LBA5. The MATTERHORN trial was a phase 3 trial of durvalumab plus FLOT for resectable GE junction and gastric cancer. And again, another area where immunotherapy has made an impact, and here we're seeing it move closer for earlier-stage disease. What was your take-home for the MATTERHORN trial? Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Yeah, so this study looked at neoadjuvant perioperative durvalumab plus our current standard chemotherapy of FLOT versus placebo plus FLOT. And this was a large study, almost 1,000 patients were randomized. And the primary endpoint was event-free survival, and it was definitely met in favor of the D + FLOT arm, as Dr. Klempner discussed after Dr Janjigian's presentation. I do think there are still some unanswered questions here. Overall survival is not yet mature, so we do have to wait and see how that shakes out. But it's very interesting and kind of is reflective of what, as you said, we're looking at earlier and earlier lines of therapy, particularly with immunotherapy, in these GI cancer spaces. So it makes a lot of sense to test this and and to look at this. So the toxicity was pretty similar to what we would expect. Primary endpoint was met, but again, we'll have to wait and see what the survival data looks like. Dr. Shaalan Beg: Yeah, and in oncology, we know, especially for treatment that does add additional cost, it does add additional potential toxicity that we want to see that overall survival nudged. I did see some polls on social media asking folks whether their practices changed from this, and I think the results were favoring adding durvalumab for this group of patients but understanding that there are caveats to the addition of treatments and the eventual FDA approval in that indication as well. Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Exactly. I completely agree with that. Dr. Shaalan Beg: All right. How about we stick with gastroesophageal cancer? LBA4002 was trastuzumab deruxtecan versus ramucirumab plus paclitaxel for second-line treatment in HER2-positive unresectable or metastatic gastric cancer or GE junction cancer. This was the DESTINY-Gastric04 study. And again, antibody-drug conjugates making a big impact across different diseases. And here we have more data in the HER2-positive gastric cancer space. Your thoughts on this study? Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Yeah, so this is a really important space in gastroesophageal cancer because the HER2 positivity rate is fairly high as compared to some of our other tumor types. So, I do think one of the important things was that patients did have biopsy confirmation of HER2 status, which was very important, and then they were randomized to either T-DXd versus the kind of second-line standard of ramucirumab-paclitaxel. So this was a great practical study and really answers a question that we had for a while in terms of does anti-HER2 therapy in the second-line really impact and improve survival. So we did see a statistically significant improvement favoring T-DXd. I do think it's always important to look at toxicity, though, too. And there was about almost 14% rate of interstitial lung disease, which of course is the most feared toxicity from some of these antibody-drug conjugates, especially T-DXd. So I do think it's important to keep that in mind, but this is definitely a great addition to the armamentarium for these HER2-positive patients. Dr. Shaalan Beg: And pancreas cancer was on the stage after a very long time with a positive clinical trial. This is Abstract 4006. These were preliminary results from a phase 2 study of elraglusib in combination with gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel versus gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel alone for previously untreated metastatic pancreas cancer. This is a frontline clinical trial of gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel plus/minus the study drug. There were other cohorts in this study as well, but they reported the results of their part 3B arm. And great to see some activity in the pancreas space. And your thoughts? Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Yeah, we definitely need better treatments in pancreas cancer. This was a very welcome presentation to see. The elraglusib is an inhibitor of GSK-3beta, and it's thought that that mediates drug resistance and EMT. And so this is, I think, a perfect setting to test this drug. So patients basically were randomized. Patients with metastatic pancreas cancer were randomized 2: 1 to gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel plus or minus this elraglusib. So, what we saw was that overall survival was better with the addition of this new drug. And overall, not only the 1-year overall survival, but also median overall survival. The thing that was interesting, though, was that we saw that the overall survival rates were 9.3 months with the combination versus 7.2 months with just gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel. And that's a little bit lower than we've seen in other studies. So, not sure what was going on there. Was it the patients that were a bit sicker? Was it a patient selection, you know, thing? I'm not really sure how to explain that so much. Also, the toxicity profile was much higher in terms of visual impairment, with over 60% of patients being treated with the combination versus 9% with gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel. So these were mild, grade 1 and 2, but still something to be cautious about. Dr. Shaalan Beg: And especially with this being a phase 2 trial, making sure that in a larger study we're able to better evaluate the toxicity and see if the control arm in the larger confirmatory study performs differently will be really important before this compound makes it to the clinic in our space. But very exciting to see these kinds of results for pancreas adenocarcinoma. Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Yeah. Dr. Shaalan Beg: We've talked, it seems, a couple of times on this podcast about the BREAKWATER clinical trial. We did hear PFS and updated OS data, updated overall survival data on first-line encorafenib plus cetuximab plus modified FOLFOX6 for BRAF-mutated colorectal cancer. This was LBA3500. And eagerly anticipated results – we have all previously heard the progression-free survival results – but here we heard updated overall survival results, and very well-received study it seemed from the audience that time. So what are your takeaways on the updated results for BREAKWATER? Dr. Kristen Ciombor: In my opinion, this was one of the most practice-confirming studies. As you mentioned, we've already seen some of the preliminary data of BREAKWATER at prior meetings. But really what was particularly impactful for me was the median overall survival with the BREAKWATER regimen. So, again, patients received FOLFOX, encorafenib cetuximab in the first line if they had BRAF-mutated V600E-mutated colorectal cancer. And the median PFS was 12.8 months, which was actually really remarkable in this traditionally very aggressive, poor prognosis subtype of tumors. So, by seeing a median overall survival of 30.3 months was just incredible, in my opinion. Just a few years ago, that was considered the median overall survival for all comers for metastatic colorectal cancer. And we know the median overall survival was more in the less than 12 months range for BRAF. So this was incredibly impactful, and I think should be absolutely practice-changing for anyone who is eligible for this regimen. I think again, where the practice meets the study is what's kind of important to think about too, how long did patients get FOLFOX, and certainly it adds toxicity to add a BRAF-targeted regimen on top of FOLFOX already. So, one of the other interesting things about the study, though, was that even though it didn't complete treatment, they actually did look at encorafenib/cetuximab alone and in the first line without chemotherapy. And those preliminary results actually looked okay, especially for patients who might not be able to tolerate chemotherapy, which we certainly see in practice. So, overall, definitely more data. And I agree that it's certainly practice-changing. Dr. Shaalan Beg: And it completely, as you mentioned, changes the outlook for a person who's diagnosed with BRAF-mutated metastatic colon cancer today versus even 7 or 8 years ago. Dr. Kristen Ciombor: And we're seeing this over and over in other subtypes too, but how you choose to treat the patient up front really matters. So really giving the right regimen up front is the key here. Dr. Shaalan Beg: And along the same lines, Abstract 3501 wanted to answer the question on whether people with MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer need double checkpoint inhibitor therapy or is single therapy enough. So this [CheckMate-8HW] study compared nivo plus ipi with nivo alone, nivo monotherapy for MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer. And we've known that both of these are fairly active regimens, but we also know the chance of immune-related adverse events is significantly higher with combination therapy. So this was a much-needed study for this group of patients. And what were your takeaways here? Dr. Kristen Ciombor: This, of course, has been really nivo-ipi in the first-line MSI-high metastatic colorectal cancer is now a standard of care. And not everybody is eligible for it, and there could be reasons, toxicity reasons, and other things too. But as we've been seeing for the last couple of years, immunotherapy clearly beats chemo in this space. And now looking at doublet versus single immunotherapy treatment in the first line, I think really nivo-ipi does beat out monotherapy. I will say, however, there is a caveat in that we still haven't seen the nivo-ipi versus nivo in the first line. So what has been presented thus far has been across all lines of therapy, and that does muddy the waters a little bit. So definitely looking forward and and we've asked this many times and based on the statistical plan and and what not, you know, we just haven't seen that data yet. But I do think it's becoming increasingly important to consider doublet immunotherapy for these patients as long as there are no contraindications. With the again, with the caveat that we have to have these toxicity discussions in the clinic with patients because many patients can tolerate it, you know, this regimen fairly well, but there can be very severe toxicities. So, I think an informed discussion should really be had with each patient before moving forward. Dr. Shaalan Beg: Yeah, informed decision, making them aware of the potential of real significant toxicities, immune-related toxicities with double therapy. But I am curious in your practice, how often do you see people choosing doublet therapy as frontline? Dr. Kristen Ciombor: So patients are really savvy, and a lot of times they've heard this data before or have come across it in patient advocacy groups and other things, and it's really nice to be able to have that conversation of the risk versus benefit. So I will say not all of my patients choose doublet, and many of them are still cured with immunotherapy monotherapy. So the big question there is, will we ever understand who actually needs the doublet versus who can still be cured or have very good long-term outcomes with just the single agent? And that has not been answered yet. Dr. Shaalan Beg: What a great point. So the last abstract I was hoping we could talk about is POD1UM-303 or the INTERAACT2 subgroup analysis and impact of delayed retifanlimab treatment for patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal. What were your thoughts here? Dr. Kristen Ciombor: This was a study, actually we saw at ESMO, we saw the primary data at ESMO last year, and this was an update with some exploratory analyses. But this was really an important study because once again, we're looking at immunotherapy in later lines of therapy. That's how we started looking at and investigating immunotherapy, and now we're moving it up and up in the treatment course. So this was a study of carboplatin/paclitaxel plus or minus retifanlimab. Actually it was retifanlimab versus placebo. And it was a positive study, as we heard last year. This actually led to FDA approval of this regimen last month, just before ASCO, and it has now been incorporated in the NCCN guidelines as the preferred first-line option. So what I thought was important from the additional data presented at ASCO was looking at the different subgroups, it did not appear that patients with liver mets or not had different outcomes. So that was really good to see because sometimes in colon cancer we see that immunotherapy doesn't work as well when patients have liver mets. And interestingly, because we use immunotherapy in anal cancer without any biomarkers, unlike with colon cancer or some of the other tumor types, also the authors looked at PD-L1 status, and it did look like maybe patients did a little bit better if they had higher PD-L1 expression, but patients still could benefit even if they were PD-L1 negative. So that was important, I think, and we will continue to see further data come out from this study. I want to mention also that EA2176 just completed accrual, so that was carbo-taxol plus or minus nivolumab. And so we should be seeing that data sometime soon, which will hopefully also confirm the ongoing role for immunotherapy in the first-line setting for anal cancer. Dr. Shaalan Beg: That was a fantastic review. Thank you, Dr Ciombor. Thanks for sharing your valuable insights with us today on the ASCO Daily News Podcast. Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Thanks for having me here. Dr. Shaalan Beg: And thank you to our listeners for your time today. You will find links to the abstracts discussed today in the transcript of this episode. And if you value the insights that you hear on the podcast, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. More on today's speakers: Dr. Shaalan Beg @ShaalanBeg Dr. Kristen Ciombor @KristenCiombor Follow ASCO on social media: @ASCO on Twitter @ASCO on BlueSky ASCO on Facebook ASCO on LinkedIn Disclosures: Dr. Shaalan Beg: Consulting or Advisory Role: Ipsen, Cancer Commons, Foundation Medicine, Science37, Nant Health, Lindus Health Speakers' Bureau: Sirtex Research Funding (Inst.): Delfi Diagnostics, Universal Diagnostics, Freenome Dr. Kristen Ciombor: Consulting or Advisory Role: Pfizer, Incyte, Exelixis, Bayer, ALX Oncology, Tempus, Agenus, Taiho Oncology, Merck, BeiGene Research Funding (Inst.): Pfizer, Boston Biomedical, MedImmune, Onyx, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Novartis, Incyte, Amgen, Sanofi, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Array BioPharma, Incyte, Daiichi Sankyo, Nucana, Abbvie, Merck, Pfizer/Calthera, Genentech, Seagen, Syndax Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Incyte, Tempus
Dr. Allison Zibelli and Dr. Rebecca Shatsky discuss advances in breast cancer research that were presented at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting, including a potential new standard of care for HER2+ breast cancer, the future of ER+ breast cancer management, and innovations in triple negative breast cancer therapy. Transcript Dr. Allison Zibelli: Hello and welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm Dr. Allison Zibelli, your guest host of the podcast today. I'm an associate professor of medicine and a breast medical oncologist at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Jefferson Health. There was a substantial amount of exciting breast cancer data presented at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting, and I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Rebecca Shatsky today to discuss some of these key advancements. Dr. Shatsky is an associate professor of medicine at UC San Diego and the head of breast medical oncology at the UC San Diego Health Moores Cancer Center, where she also serves as the director of the Breast Cancer Clinical Trials Program and the Inflammatory and Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Program. Our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode. Dr. Shatsky, it's great to have you on the podcast today. Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: Thanks, Dr. Zibelli. It's wonderful to be here. Dr. Allison Zibelli: So, we're starting with DESTINY-Breast09, which was trastuzumab deruxtecan and pertuzumab versus our more standard regimen of taxane, trastuzumab pertuzumab for first-line treatment of metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer. Could you tell us a little bit about the study? Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: Yeah, absolutely. So, this was a long-awaited study. When T-DXd, or trastuzumab deruxtecan, really hit the market, a lot of these DESTINY-Breast trials were started around the same time. Now, this was a global, randomized, phase 3 study presented by Dr. Sara Tolaney from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of Harvard in Boston. It was assessing essentially T-DXd in the first-line setting for metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer in addition to pertuzumab. And that was randomized against our standard-of-care regimen, which was established over a decade ago by the CLEOPATRA trial, and we've all been using that internationally for at least the past 10 years. So, this was a large trial, and it was one-to-one-to-one of patients getting T-DXd plus pertuzumab, T-DXd alone, or THP, which mostly is used as docetaxel and trastuzumab and pertuzumab every three weeks for six cycles. And this was in over 1,000 patients; it was 1,159 patients with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer. This was a very interesting trial. It was looking at the use of trastuzumab deruxtecan, but patients were started on this treatment for their first-line metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer with no end date to their T-DXd. So, it was, you know, you were started on T-DXd every 3 weeks until progression. Now, CLEOPATRA is a little bit different than that, though, as we know. So, CLEOPATRA has a taxane plus trastuzumab and pertuzumab. But generally, patients drop the taxane after about six to seven cycles because, as we know, you can't be really on a taxane indefinitely. You get pretty substantial neuropathy as well as cytopenias, other things that end up happening. And so, in general, that regimen has sort of a limited time course for its chemotherapy portion, and the patients maintained after the taxane is dropped on their trastuzumab and their pertuzumab, plus or minus endocrine therapy if the investigator so desires. And the primary endpoint of the trial was progression-free survival by blinded, independent central review (BICR) in the intent-to-treat population. And then it had its other endpoints as overall survival, investigator-assessed progression-free survival, objective response rates, and duration of response, and of course, safety. As far as the results of this trial, so, I think that most of us key opinion leaders in breast oncology were expecting that this was going to be a positive trial. And it surely was. I mean, this is a really, really active drug, especially in HER2-positive disease, of course. So, the DESTINY-Breast03 data really established that, that this is a very effective treatment in HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. And this trial really, again, showed that. So, there were 383 patients that ended up on the trastuzumab plus deruxtecan plus pertuzumab arm, and 387 got THP, the CLEOPATRA regimen. What was really interesting also to note of this before I go on to the results was that 52% of patients on this trial had de novo metastatic disease. And that's pretty unusual for any kind of metastatic breast cancer trial. It kind of shows you, though, just how aggressive this disease is, that a lot of patients, they present with de novo metastatic disease. It's also reflecting the global nature of this trial where maybe the screening efforts are a little bit less than maybe in the United States, and more patients are presenting as later stage because to have a metastatic breast cancer trial in the United States with 52% de novo metastatic disease doesn't usually happen. But regardless, the disease characteristics were pretty well matched between the two groups. 54% of the patients were triple positive, or you could say hormone-positive because whether they were PR positive or ER positive and PR negative doesn't really matter in this disease. And so, the interim data cutoff was February of this year, of 2025. So, the follow-up so far has been about 29 months, so the data is still really immature, only 38% mature for progression-free survival interim analysis. But what we saw is that T-DXd plus pertuzumab, it really improved progression-free survival. It had a hazard ratio that was pretty phenomenal at 0.56 with a confidence interval that was pretty narrow of 0.44 to 0.71. So, very highly statistically significant data here. The progression-free survival was consistent across all subgroups. Overall survival, very much immature at this time, but of course, the trend is towards an overall survival benefit for the T-DXd group. The median durable response with T-DXd plus pertuzumab exceeded 3 years. Now, importantly, though, I want to stress this, is grade 3 or above treatment-emergent adverse events occurred in both subgroups pretty equally. But there were 2 deaths in the T-DXd group due to interstitial lung disease. And there was a 12.1% adjudicated drug-induced interstitial lung disease/pneumonitis event rate in the T-DXd group and only 1%, and it was grade 1-2, in the THP group. So, that's really the caveat of this therapy, is we know that a percentage of patients are going to get interstitial lung disease, and that some may have very serious adverse events from it. So, that's always something I keep in the back of my mind when I treat patients with T-DXd. And so, overall, the conclusions of the trial were pretty much a slam dunk. T-DXd plus pertuzumab, it had a highly statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival versus the CLEOPATRA regimen. And that was across all subgroups for first-line metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer here. And so, yeah, the data was pretty impressive. Just to go into the overall response rate, because that's always super important as well, you had 85.1% of patients having a confirmed overall RECIST response rate in the T-DXd plus pertuzumab group and a 78.6 in the CLEOPATRA group. The complete CR rate, complete response was 15.1% in the T-DXd group and 8.5 in the CLEOPATRA regimen. And it was really an effective regimen in this group, of course. Dr. Allison Zibelli: So, the investigators say at the end of their abstract that this is the new standard of care. Would you agree with that statement? Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: Yeah, that was a bold statement to make because I would say in the United States, not necessarily at the moment because the quality of life here, you have to think really hard about. Because one thing that's really important about the DESTINY-Breast09 data is that this was very much an international trial, and in many of the countries where patients enrolled on this, they were not able to access T-DXd off trial. And so, for them, this means T-DXd now or potentially never. And so, that is a really big difference whereas internationally, that may mean standard of care. However, in the US, patients have no issues accessing T-DXd in the second- or third-line settings. And right now, it's the standard of care in the second line in the United States, with all patients basically getting this second-line therapy except for some unique patients where they may be doing a PATINA trial regimen, which we saw at San Antonio Breast Cancer in 2024 of the triple-positive patients getting hormonal therapy plus palbociclib, which had a really great durable response. That was super impressive as well. Or there is the patient that the investigator can pick KADCYLA because the patient really wants to preserve their hair or maybe it's more indolent disease. But the quality of life on T-DXd indefinitely in the first-line setting is a big deal because, again, that CLEOPATRA regimen allows patients to drop their chemotherapy component about five to six months in. And with this, you're on a drug that feels very chemo-heavy indefinitely. And so, I think there's a lot more to investigate as far as what we're going to do with this data in the United States because it's a lot to commit a patient in the first-line metastatic setting. These de novo metastatic patients, some of them may be cured, honestly, on the HER2-targeting regimen. That's something we see these days. Dr. Allison Zibelli: So, very interesting trial. I'm sure we'll be talking about this for a long time. So, let's move on to SERENA-6, which was, I thought, a very interesting trial. This trial took patients with ER positive, advanced breast cancer after six months on an AI (aromatase inhibitor) and a CDK4/6 inhibitor. They did ctDNA every two to three months, and when they saw an ESR1 mutation emerge, they changed half of the patients to camizestrant plus CDK4/6 and kept the other half on the AI plus CDK4/6. Can you talk about that trial a little bit, please? Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: Yeah, so this was a big trial at ASCO25. This was presented as a Plenary Session. So, this was camizestrant plus a CDK4/6 inhibitor, and it could have been any of the three, so palbo, ribo, or abemaciclib in the first-line metastatic hormone-positive population, and patients were on an AI with that. They were, interestingly, tested by ctDNA at baseline to see if they had an ESR1 mutation. So, that was an interesting feature of this trial. But patients had to have already been on their CDK4/6 inhibitor plus AI for at least 6 months to enroll. And then, as you mentioned, they got ctDNA testing every 2 to 3 months. This was also a phase 3, double-blind, international trial. And I do want to highlight again, international here, because that's important when we're considering some of this data in the U.S. because it influences some of the results. So, this was presented by Dr. Nick Turner of the Royal Marsden in the UK. So, just a little bit of background for our listeners on ESR1 mutations and why they're important. This is the most common, basically, acquired resistance mutation to patients being treated with aromatase inhibitors. We know that treatment with aromatase inhibitors can induce this. It makes a conformational change in the estrogen receptor that makes the estrogen receptor constitutively active, which allows the cell to signal despite the influence of the aromatase inhibitor to decrease the estrogen production so that the ligand binding doesn't matter as much as far as the cell signaling and transcription is concerned. And camizestrant, you know, as an oral SERD, just to explain that a little bit too; these are estrogen receptor degraders. The first-in-class of a selective estrogen receptor degrader to make it to market was fulvestrant. And that's really been our standard-of-care estrogen degrader for the past 25 years, almost 25 years. And so, a lot of us are just looking for some of these oral SERDs to replace that. But regardless, they do tend to work in the ESR1-mutated population. And we know that patients on aromatase inhibitors, the estimates of patients developing an ESR1 mutation, depending on which study you look at, somewhere between 30% to 50% overall, patients will develop this mutation with hormone-positive metastatic breast cancer. There is a small percentage of patients that have these at baseline without even treatment of an aromatase inhibitor. The estimates of that are somewhere between 0.5 and up to 5%, depending on the trial you look at and the population. But regardless, there is a chance someone on their CDK4/6 inhibitor plus AI at 6 months' time course could have had an ESR1 mutation at that time. But anyway, so they got this ctDNA every 2 to 3 months, and once they were found to develop an ESR1 mutation, the patients were then switched to the oral SERD. AstraZeneca's version of the oral SERD is camizestrant, 75 mg daily. And then their type of CDK4/6 inhibitor was maintained, so they didn't switch the brand of their CDK4/6 inhibitor, importantly. And that was looked at then for progression-free survival, but these were patients with measurable disease by RECIST version 1.1. And the data cut off here was November of 2024. This was a big trial, you know, and I think that that's influential here because this was 3,256 patients, and that's a lot of patients. So, they were all eligible. And then 315 patients ended up being randomized to switch to camizestrant upon presence of that ESR1 mutation. So, that was 157 patients. And then the other half, so they were randomized 1:1, they continued on their AI without switching to an oral SERD. That was 158 patients. They were matched pretty well. And so, their baseline characteristics, you know, the two subgroups was good. But this was highly statistically significant data. I'm not going to diminish that in any way. Your hazard ratio was 0.44. Highly statistically significant confidence intervals. And you had a median progression-free survival in those that switched to camizestrant of 16 months, and then the non-switchers was 9.2 months. So, the progression-free survival benefit there was also consistent across the subgroups. And so, you had at 12 months, the PFS rate was 60.7% for the non-treatment group and 33.4% in the treatment group. What's interesting, though, is we don't have overall survival data. This is really immature, only 12% mature as far as overall survival. And again, because this was an international trial and patients in other countries right now do not have the access to oral SERDs that the United States does, the crossover rate, they were not allowed to crossover, and so, a very few patients, when we look at progression-free survival 2 and ultimately overall survival, were able to access an oral SERD in the off-trial here and in the non-treatment group. And so, that's really important as far as we look at these results. Adverse events were pretty minimal. These are very safe drugs, camizestrant and all the other oral SERDs. They have some mild toxicities. Camizestrant is known for something weird, which is called photopsia, which is some flashing lights in the periphery of the eye, but it doesn't seem to have any serious clinical significance that we know of. It has a little bit of bradycardia, but it's otherwise really well tolerated. You know, I hate to say that because that's very subjective, right? I'm not the one taking the drug. But it doesn't have any serious adverse events that would cause discontinuation. And that's really what we saw in the trial. The discontinuation rates were really low. But overall, I mean, this was a positive trial. SERENA-6 showed that switching to camizestrant at the first sign of an ESR1 mutation on CDK4/6 inhibitor plus AI improved progression-free survival. That's all we can really say from it right now. Dr. Allison Zibelli: So, let's move on to ASCENT-04, which was a bit more straightforward. Sacituzumab govitecan plus pembrolizumab versus chemotherapy plus pembrolizumab in PD-L1-positive, triple-negative breast cancer. Could you talk about that study? Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: Yeah, so this was also presented by the lovely Sara Tolaney from Dana-Farber. And this study made me really excited. And maybe that's because I'm a triple-negative breast cancer person. I mean, not to say that I don't treat hundreds of patients with hormone- positive, but our unmet needs in triple negative are huge because this is a disease where you have got to throw your best available therapy at it as soon as you can to improve survival because survival is so poor in this disease. The average survival with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer in the United States is still 13-18 months, and that's terrible. And so, for full disclosure, I did have this trial open at my site. I was one of the site PIs. I'm not the global PI of the study, obviously. So, what this study was was for patients who had had at least a progression-free survival of 6 months after their curative intent therapy or de novo metastatic disease. They were PD-L1 positive as assessed by the Dako 22C3 assay of greater than or equal to a CPS score of 10. So, that's what the KEYNOTE-355 trial was based on as well. So, standard definition of PD-L1 positive in breast cancer here. And basically, these patients were randomized 1:1 to either their sacituzumab govitecan plus pembrolizumab, day 1 they got both therapies, and then day 8 just the saci, as is standard for sacituzumab. And then the other group got the KEYNOTE-355 regimen. So, that is pembrolizumab with – your options are carbogem there, paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel. And it's up to investigator's decision which upon those they decided. They followed these patients for disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. It was really an impressive trial in my opinion because we know already that this didn't just improve progression-free survival, because survival is so poor in this disease, of course, we know that it improved overall survival. It's trending towards that very much, and I think that's going to be shown immediately. And then the objective response rates were better, which is key in this disease because in the first-line setting, you've got a lot of people who, especially your relapsed TNBC that don't respond to anything. And you lose a ton of patients even in the first-line setting in this disease. And so, this was 222 patients to chemotherapy and pembro and 221 to sacituzumab plus pembro. Median follow-up has only been 14 months, so it's still super early here. Hazard ratio so far of progression-free survival is 0.65, highly statistically significant, narrow confidence intervals. And so, the median duration of response here for the saci group was 16.5 months versus 9.2 months. So, you're getting a 7-month progression-free survival benefit here, which in triple negative is pretty fantastic. I mean, this reminds me of when we saw the ASCENT data originally come out for sacituzumab, and we were all just so happy that we had this tool now that doubled progression-free and overall survival and made such a difference in this really horrible disease where patients do poorly. So, OS is technically immature here, but it's really trending very heavily towards improvement in overall survival. Importantly, the treatment-related adverse events in this, I mean, we know sacituzumab causes neutropenia, people who are experienced with this drug know how to manage it at this point. There wasn't any really unexpected treatment-related adverse events. You get some people with sacituzumab who have diarrhea. It's usually pretty manageable with some Imodium. So, it was cytopenias predominantly in this disease in this population that were highlighted as far as adverse events. But I'm going to be honest, like I was surprised that this wasn't the plenary over the SERENA-6 data because this, in my mind, there we have a practice-changing trial. I will immediately be trying to use this in my PD-L1 population because, to be honest, as a triple-negative breast cancer clinical specialist, when I get a patient with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who's PD-L1 positive, I think, "Oh, thank God," because we know that part of the disease just does better in general. But now I have something that really could give them a durable response for much longer than I ever thought possible when I started really heavily treating this disease. And so, this was immediately practice-changing for me. Dr. Allison Zibelli: I think that it's pretty clear that this is at least an option, if not the option, for this group of patients. Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: Yeah, the duration of responses here was – it's just really important because, I mean, I do think this will make people live longer. Dr. Allison Zibelli: So, moving on to the final study that we're going to discuss today, neoCARHP (LBA500), which was neoadjuvant taxane plus trastuzumab, pertuzumab, plus or minus carbo(platin) in HER2-positive early breast cancer. I think this is a study a lot of us have been waiting for. What was the design and the results of this trial? Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: I was really excited about this as well because I'm one of those people that was waiting for this. This is a Chinese trial, so that is something to take note of. It wasn't an international trial, but it was a de-escalation trial which had become really popular in HER2-positive therapy because we know that we're overtreating HER2-positive breast cancer in a lot of patients. A lot of patients we're throwing the kitchen sink at it when maybe that is not necessary, and we can really de-escalate and try to personalize therapy a little bit better because these patients tend to do well. So, the standard of care, of course, in HER2-positive curative intent breast cancer with tumors that are greater than 2 cm is to give them the TCHP regimen, which is docetaxel, carboplatin, trastuzumab, and pertuzumab. And that was sort of established by several trials in the NeoSphere trial, and now it's been repeated in a lot of different studies as well. And so, that's really the standard of care that most people in the United States use for HER2-positive curative intent breast cancer. This was a trial to de-escalate the carboplatin, which I was super excited about because many of us who treat this disease a lot think carbo is the least important part of the therapy you're giving there. We don't really know that it's necessary. We've just been doing it for a long time, and we know that it adds a significant amount of toxicity. It causes thrombocytopenia, it causes severe nausea, really bad cytopenias that can be difficult in the last few cycles of this to manage. So, this trial was created. It randomized patients one to one with stage 2 and 3 HER2-positive breast cancer to either get THP, a taxane, pertuzumab, trastuzumab, similar to the what we do in first-line metastatic HER2-positive versus the whole TCHP with a carboplatin AUC of 6, which is what's pretty standard. And it was a non-inferiority trial, so important there. It wasn't to establish superiority of this regimen, which none of us, I think, were looking for it to. And it was a modified intent-to-treat population. And so, all patients got at least one cycle of this to be assessed as a standard for an intent-to-treat trial. And so, they assumed a pCR rate of about 62.8% for both groups. And, of course, it included both HER2-positive triple positives and ER negatives, which are, you know, a bit different diseases, to be honest, but we all kind of categorize them and treat them the same. And so, this trial was powered appropriately to detect a non-inferiority difference. And so, we had about 380 patients treated on both arms, and there was an absolute difference of only 1.8% of those treated with carbo versus those without. Which was fantastic because you really realized that de-escalation here may be something we can really do. And so, the patients who got, of course, the taxane regimen had fewer adverse events. They had way fewer grade 3 and 4 adverse events than the THP group. No treatment-associated deaths occur, which is pretty standard for- this is a pretty safe regimen, but it causes a lot of hospitalizations due to diarrhea, due to cytopenias, and neutropenic fever, of course. And so, I thought that this was something that I could potentially enact, you know, and be practice-changing. It's hard to say that when it's a trial that was only done in China, so it's not necessarily the United States population always. But I think for patients moving forward, especially those with, say, a 2.5 cm tumor, you know, node negative, those, I'd feel pretty comfortable not giving them the carboplatin here. Notes that I want to make about this population is that the majority were stage 2 and not stage 3. They weren't necessarily your inflammatory HER2-positive breast cancer patients. And that the taxane that was utilized in the trial is a little different than what we use in the United States. The patients were allowed to get nab-paclitaxel, which we don't have FDA approval for in the first-line curative intent setting for HER2-positive breast cancer in the United States. So, a lot of them got abraxane, and then they also got paclitaxel. We tend to use docetaxel every 3 weeks in the United States. So, just to point out that difference. We don't really know if that's important or not, but it's just a little bit different to the population we standardly treat. Dr. Allison Zibelli: So, are there patients that you would still give TCHP to? Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: Yeah, great question. I've been asked that a lot in the past like week since ASCO. I'd say in my inflammatory breast cancer patients, that's a group I do tend to sometimes throw the kitchen sink at. Now, I don't actually use AC in those because I know that that was the concern, but I think the TRAIN-2 trial really showed us you don't need to use Adriamycin in HER2-positive disease unless it's like refractory. So, I don't know that I would throw this on my stage 3C or inflammatory breast cancer patients yet because the majority of this were not stage 3. So, in your really highly lymph node positive patients, I'm a little bit hesitant to de-escalate them from the start. This is more of a like, if there's serious toxicity concerns, dropping carbo is absolutely fine here. Dr. Allison Zibelli: All right, great. Thank you, Dr. Shatsky, for sharing your valuable insights with us on the ASCO Daily News Podcast today. Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: Thanks so much, Dr. Zibelli and ASCO Daily News. I really want to thank you for inviting me to talk about this today. It was really fun, and I hope you find my opinions on some of this valuable. And so, I just want to thank everybody and my listeners as well. Dr. Allison Zibelli: And thank you to our listeners for joining us today. You'll find the links to all the abstracts discussed today in the transcript of this episode. Finally, if you like this podcast and you learn things from it, please take a moment to rate, review, and describe because it helps other people find us wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you again. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. More on today's speakers Dr. Allison Zibelli Dr. Rebecca Shatsky @Dr_RShatsky Follow ASCO on social media: @ASCO on Twitter @ASCO on Bluesky ASCO on Facebook ASCO on LinkedIn Disclosures: Dr. Allison Zibelli: No relationships to disclose Dr. Rebecca Shatsky: Consulting or Advisory Role: Stemline, Astra Zeneca, Endeavor BioMedicines, Lilly, Novartis, TEMPUS, Guardant Health, Daiichi Sankyo/Astra Zeneca, Pfizer Research Funding (Inst.): OBI Pharma, Astra Zeneca, Greenwich LifeSciences, Briacell, Gilead, OnKure, QuantumLeap Health, Stemline Therapeutics, Regor Therapeutics, Greenwich LifeSciences, Alterome Therapeutics
This is the second episode of a two-part series on the HER2 diagnostic and treatment landscape in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), hosted by the Oncology Brothers, Drs Rohit and Rahul Gosain. In this episode, Dr Isabel Preeshagul and Dr Eric Singhi provide the benefit of their experience when discussing how to approach different treatment scenarios in HER2-mutant NSCLC. The conversation unfolds to cover: • Ways to distinguish HER2 alterations from other alterations on biomarker reports • The latest efficacy and safety data of currently approved and emerging treatments for HER2-altered NSCLC • The potential CNS activity of these treatments in patients with HER2-mutated NSCLC • How the treatment pathway may look in the near future Clinical takeaways • In NSCLC, HER2-positivity includes mutations, amplifications and overexpression. It's important to distinguish HER2 alterations from EGFR mutations, particularly exon 20 insertions, when interpreting next-generation sequencing (NGS) results • Trastuzumab Deruxtecan (T-DXd) is currently the only approved targeted agent for HER2-altered NSCLC in the 2nd-line setting. It shows promising efficacy, especially in HER2-mutant cases, but has limited brain penetration and is associated with notable side effects, including pneumonitis, which requires close monitoring • Emerging TKIs, such as zongertinib, BAY 2927088 (sevabertinib), and NVL-330, target HER2-mutations and have shown high response rates and CNS activity in early studies, without ILD/pneumonitis. These treatments come with unique side effects like diarrhoea and rash, which can be managed with supportive care • CNS metastases are common, with up to 30% of HER2-altered NSCLC patients presenting with or quickly developing CNS metastases. Current large molecule therapies (like T-DXd) have limited brain penetration, making small-molecule TKIs, like zongertinib, BAY 2927088 (sevabertinib), and NVL-330, promising for their potential CNS activity • Current standard 1st-line care for HER2-mutant NSCLC remains platinum-based chemotherapy ± immunotherapy. Targeted agents (like T-DXd) are generally reserved for 2nd-line use, but ongoing trials are evaluating the move toward frontline therapy Follow us on social media: • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers • Website: https://oncbrothers.com/ Don't forget to subscribe for the next episode
Featuring perspectives from Ms Marianne J Davies, Dr Edward B Garon, Ms Marissa Marti-Smith and Dr Tiffany A Traina, including the following topics: Introduction (0:00) Overview of Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) (4:40) Trastuzumab Deruxtecan (T-DXd) in Patients with HER2-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer (mBC) with and without Brain Metastases (12:40) Role of ADCs for Patients with ER-Positive mBC (35:09) T-DXd in Patients with Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) with HER2 Alterations (52:20) Emerging Role of ADCs for Patients with Progressive EGFR-Mutant NSCLC (1:12:20) NCPD information and select publications
Featuring a slide presentation and related discussion from Dr Adrienne G Waks, including the following topics: Updated analyses from key studies of the 21-gene Recurrence Score® for localized ER-positive breast cancer (29:30) Four-year landmark analysis of the NATALEE trial of adjuvant ribociclib with nonsteroidal aromatase inhibitor for localized breast cancer (9:49) The PADMA trial of palbociclib with endocrine therapy compared to chemotherapy induction followed by endocrine therapy maintenance for hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer (mBC) (11:25) Imlunestrant with or without abemaciclib for metastatic ER-positive mBC (13:18) TROP2-directed antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) datopotamab deruxtecan and sacituzumab tirumotecan for HR-positive/HER2-negative mBC (17:50) Recent analyses from the DESTINY-Breast06 trial of trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) after endocrine therapy for HR-positive, HER2-low or HER2-ultralow mBC (21:09) The ICARUS-BREAST01 Phase II trial of the HER3-targeted ADC patritumab deruxtecan for HR-positive/HER2-negative mBC (26:02) Updates from neoadjuvant/adjuvant trials of pembrolizumab (KEYNOTE-522) and atezolizumab (NSABP B-59/GBG 96-GeparDouze) for localized triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) (27:36) Ten-year update of the OlympiA trial of adjuvant olaparib for patients with germline BRCA1/2-mutated HER2-negative localized breast cancer (31:23) Exploratory analysis of patients who did or did not receive prior PD-1/PD-L1 inhibition in the Phase III OptiTROP-Breast01 study of sacituzumab tirumotecan versus chemotherapy for previously treated advanced TNBC (32:56) CNS efficacy of T-DXd (DESTINY-Breast12 trial) and outcomes with palbociclib combined with anti-HER2 therapy (AFT-38 PATINA trial) for HER2-positive mBC (34:04) CME information and select publications
In this episode, listen to Stephanie L. Graff, MD, FACP, FASCO; and Laura M. Spring, MD, share their clinical insights and takeaways regarding the current treatment landscape for first-line treatment of patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer including:Data from multicenter, single-arm, phase IIIb/IV DESTINY-Breast12 evaluating trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) in patients with advanced HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer and 2 or fewer previous therapiesTreatment sequencing and preferred treatment options in patients with brain metastasesResults from phase III PATINA trial of trastuzumab, pertuzumab, plus endocrine therapy with or without palbociclib in hormone-receptor positive/HER2-positive metastatic breast cancerThoughts on the use of T-DXd earlier in the treatment paradigm in light of recent results from the PATINA trial and highly anticipated results from the DESTINY-Breast09 trialProgram faculty:Stephanie L. Graff, MD, FACP, FASCODirector of Breast Oncology, Brown University HealthCo-Lead, Breast Cancer Translational Disease Research GroupLegorreta Cancer Center at Brown UniversityAssociate Professor of MedicineWarren Alpert Medical School of Brown UniversityProvidence, Rhode IslandLaura M. Spring, MDBreast Medical OncologistMass General Hospital Cancer CenterHarvard Medical SchoolBoston, Massachusetts Resources:To access the patient cases associated with this podcast discussion, please visit the program page and register for an upcoming webinar on this topic.
In today's episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, FASCO, about the FDA approval of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu) for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable or metastatic, hormone receptor–positive, HER2-low or -ultralow breast cancer, as determined by an FDA-approved test, that has progressed on at least 1 endocrine therapy in the metastatic setting. Dr Bardia serves as a professor in the Department of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology and is the director of Translational Research Integration at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. In our exclusive interview, Dr Bardia discussed the significance of this approval, findings from the pivotal DESTINY-Breast06 trial (NCT04494425), and what this new indication for T-DXd means for the future of HER2 testing in breast cancer.
Welcome to the Oncology Brothers podcast! In this episode, Drs. Rahul and Rohit Gosain are joined by Dr. Kevin Kalinsky, a leading breast medical oncologist and director of the breast cancer program at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Join us as we dive deep into the complexities of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer treatment. We discuss the latest advancements in treatment algorithms, including the use of OncotypeDX in premenopausal versus postmenopausal women, the role of ovarian function suppression, and the implications of new approvals like Inavolisib and CDK4-6 inhibitors. Key topics covered in this episode: • The significance of recurrence scores in dictating adjuvant chemotherapy • The ongoing OFSET trial and its potential impact on treatment decisions • Insights into the use of genomic assays like MammaPrint and RS-Clin • The evolving landscape of treatment options for locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer • The latest on PARP inhibitors, T-DXd, and other novel therapies Whether you're a medical professional or someone interested in the latest in oncology, this episode is packed with valuable insights and clinical pearls. Don't forget to subscribe for more discussions on cancer treatment, FDA approvals, and conference highlights! YouTube: https://youtu.be/_icBN3J3Bc0 Follow us on social media: • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers #OncologyBrothers #HR+ #breastcancer #HormoneReceptorPositiveCancer #oncbrothers #Podcast
In this episode of the Oncology Brothers podcast, Drs. Rohit and Rahul Gosain welcome Dr. Sarah Sammons from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to discuss the treatment landscape for HER2-positive breast cancer. Building on their previous discussions about triple-negative breast cancer, Drs. Gosain and Sammons dive deep into the treatment algorithms for early-stage, locally advanced, and metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer. Key topics include: • Treatment paradigms for early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer, including the APT trial and considerations for neoadjuvant therapy. • The standard of care for locally advanced disease with TCHP and managing associated toxicities. • Insights into the latest data from the PATINA trial and its implications for metastatic HER2-positive patients. • Discussion on the use of T-DXd and other treatment options in the second and third-line settings, especially for patients with brain metastases. Join us for an informative conversation filled with clinical pearls and practical insights that can help guide treatment decisions in HER2-positive breast cancer. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and check out our other episodes in the treatment algorithm series! #OncologyBrothers #HER2Positive #BreastCancer #BreastCancerTreatment #CancerPodcast #DanaFarber YouTube: https://youtu.be/_y0xSxJTptw Follow us on social media: • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers
Featuring slide presentations and related discussion from Dr Joyce O'Shaughnessy, Dr Mark Pegram and Prof Peter Schmid, including the following topics: Strategies to Identify Patients with HER2-Low and HER2-Ultralow Breast Cancer (0:00) Case: A woman in her mid 50s initially presenting with ER-positive, HER2 IHC 1+ locally advanced breast cancer who experiences progression to HER2 0 metastatic disease (20:53) Case: A woman in her early 60s with ER-positive, HER2 IHC 1+ metastatic breast cancer (mBC) who experiences disease progression 8 months after starting first-line CDK4/6 and aromatase inhibitor (29:14) Expanding the Spectrum of Targeted Therapy (38:52) Case: A woman in her early 60s with HR-positive, HER2 IHC 1+ mBC who receives fifth-line T-DXd resulting in stable disease (1:04:13) Case: A woman in her early 50s with progressive HR-positive, HER2 IHC 0 mBC and an ESR1 mutation who has ultralow HER2 expression on rebiopsy of new liver lesions (1:12:35) Identification and Management of Adverse Events with T-DXd (1:20:27) Case: A woman in her late 40s with HR-positive, HER2 IHC 2+ mBC who experienced persistent low-grade nausea with T-DXd that resolved with olanzapine (1:34:02) Case: A woman in her early 60s with ER-positive, HER2 2+ mBC who received T-DXd resulting in fatigue and asymptomatic interstitial lung disease (1:48:58) CME information and select publications
Welcome to the Oncology Brothers podcast! In this episode, hosts Drs. Rahul and Rohit Gosain are joined by Dr. Virginia Kaklamani from the UTHealth San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center to discuss the latest advances in the treatment of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) as we kick off 2025. • The treatment paradigms for early-stage TNBC, including the role Sacituzumab and radiation therapy. • Insights from the SABCS 2024 conference, focusing on the keynote 522 regimen and its implications for neoadjuvant treatment. • The management of locally advanced and metastatic TNBC, including the use of immunotherapy and the importance of PD-L1 testing. • Strategies for managing toxicities associated with treatments like sacituzumab and T-DXd. Whether you're a healthcare professional or someone interested in the latest in oncology, this episode provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of breast cancer treatment. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more updates from the Oncology Brothers! Key Takeaways: • Current standard of care for locally advanced TNBC. • The significance of chemotherapy and immunotherapy in treatment plans. • Managing toxicities in metastatic disease. Stay tuned for more discussions on treatment algorithms, FDA approvals, and clinical pearls in oncology! YouTube: https://youtu.be/GfROoYPVb_8 Follow us on social media: • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers
Join us for another insightful episode of the Oncology Brothers podcast as we dive into the latest breakthroughs in breast cancer research from the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2024. In this episode, hosts Drs. Rahul and Rohit Gosain are joined by Dr. Sara Tolaney from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to discuss three pivotal studies: 1. DESTINY-Breast06 - An update on the efficacy of T-DXd in HER2 low and ultra-low breast cancer patients, highlighting its potential to change treatment paradigms for endocrine refractory disease. 2. DESTINY-Breast12 - Exploring the robust intracranial activity of T-DXd in patients with brain metastases and its impact on quality of life. 3. PATINA Trial - A groundbreaking study on the use of CDK4-6 inhibitors in combination with trastuzumab and pertuzumab for ER-positive, HER2-positive breast cancer, showcasing impressive progression-free survival rates. Tune in as we unpack the implications of these studies for clinical practice and discuss the future of breast cancer treatment. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more updates on oncology research and treatment strategies! Follow us on social media: • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/oncbrothers • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oncbrothers For more information, visit our website: OncologyBrothers.com #OncologyBrothers #BreastCancer #SABCS2024 #TDXD #PATINA #CancerResearch #Podcast
In this episode of Oncology Unplugged, a podcast series from MedNews Week, host Chandler Park, MD, a medical oncologist at the Norton Cancer Institute in Louisville, Kentucky, was joined by Guiseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, a full professor of medical oncology at the University of Milan, as well as the director of the Early Drug Development Division and co-chair for the Experimental Therapeutics Program at the European Institute of Oncology in Italy. In this exclusive interview, Drs Park and Curigliano discussed the potential future role of artificial intelligence across oncology disciplines; how advances in precision medicine will help improve patient care; the significance of seeing early research with fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu) evolve into the present era, where the agent is FDA approved for the treatment of patients with HER2-positive solid tumors. They also discussed their insights on data from the phase 3 DESTINY-Breast06 trial (NCT04494425) investigating T-DXd in patients with HER2-low or -ultralow, hormone receptor–positive, metastatic breast cancer.
In today's episode, supported by Daiichi Sankyo, we had the pleasure of speaking with Misako Nagasaka, MD, PhD, about the use of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu) in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Dr Nagasaka is an associate professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology and the Division of Medicine at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine. In our exclusive interview, Dr Nagasaka discussed key findings from the phase 2 DESTINY-PanTumor02 (NCT04482309) and DESTINY-Lung01 (NCT03505710) trials that led to the FDA approval of T-DXd for patients with unresectable or metastatic HER2-positive solid tumors, including those with NSCLC; where next-generation sequencing fits into her clinical practice; and the current role of T-DXd in lung cancer management.
OncLive On Air is a podcast from OncLive®, which provides oncology professionals with the resources and information they need to provide the best patient care. In both digital and print formats, OncLive covers every angle of oncology practice, from new technology to treatment advances to important regulatory decisions. In today's episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Susana M. Campos, MD, MPH, about the role of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd; Enhertu) in patients with HER2-positive gynecologic cancers. Dr Campos is the clinical director and the director of Educational Initiatives in the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. In our exclusive interview, Dr Campos discussed the clinical implications of findings from the gynecologic cancer cohorts of the phase 2 DESTINY-PanTumor02 trial (NCT04482309).