The interim analysis of the phase IIIb LUCY trial demonstrated the clinical effectiveness of olaparib in patients with germline BRCA-mutated (gBRCAm), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative metastatic breast cancer (mBC), with median progression-free survival (PFS) of 8.11 months, which was similar to that in the olaparib arm of the phase III OlympiAD trial (7...
Germline pathogenic variants in checkpoint kinase 2 (CHEK2) are associated with a moderately increased risk of breast cancer (BC). The spectrum of clinicopathologic features and genetics of these tumors has not been fully established. We characterized the histopathologic and clinicopathologic features of 44 CHEK2-associated BCs from 35 women, and assessed responses to neoadjuvant...
An increased incidence of hypothyroidism among breast cancer survivors has been observed in earlier studies. The impact of the postoperative treatment modalities and their potential interplay on hypothyroidism development needs to be studied. We conducted a population- and registry-based study using the Breast Cancer Data Base Sweden (BCBaSe) including females diagnosed with...
Breast cancer is one of the leading types of cancer diagnosed in women. Despite the improvements in chemotherapeutic cure strategies, drug resistance is still an obstacle leading to disease aggressiveness. The small non-coding RNA molecules, miRNAs, have been implicated recently to be involved as regulators of gene expression through the silencing of mRNA targets that contributed...
To explore the association of clinicopathologic and molecular factors with the occurrence of positive margins after first surgery in breast cancer. The clinical and RNA-Seq data for 951 (75 positive and 876 negative margins) primary breast cancer patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) were used. The role of each clinicopathologic factor for margin prediction and also their...
To assess the effects of contemporary treatment of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) on the risk of developing an ipsilateral invasive breast cancer (iIBC) in the Dutch female population. Clinical data was obtained from the Netherlands Cancer Registry (NCR), a nationwide registry of all primary malignancies in the Netherlands integrated with the data from PALGA, the Dutch...
There remains a need for novel therapies for patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC). We explore the use of a novel biomarker of survival that could potentially expedite the testing of novel therapies. We applied a tumor regression-growth model to radiographic measurement data from 393 women with MBC enrolled in PALOMA-3 examining efficacy of palbociclib in disease that had...
Delays to breast cancer treatment can lead to more aggressive and extensive treatments, increased expenses, increased psychological distress, and poorer survival. We explored the individual and area level factors associated with the interval between diagnosis and first treatment in a population-based cohort in Queensland, Australia. Data from 3216 Queensland women aged 20 to 79...
Endocrine therapy is the anti-tumor therapy for human breast cancer but endocrine resistance was a major burden. It has been reported that Palbociclib and fulvestrant can be used in combination for the treatment of patients who are experiencing endocrine resistance. However, the underlying mechanism is unclear. In this study, we aimed to investigate the mechanism by which...
Data on treatments for male breast cancer patients are limited owing to rarity and underrepresentation in clinical trials. The real-world POLARIS study gathers data on palbociclib use for the treatment of hormone receptor–positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2–negative (HR+/HER2–) advanced breast cancer (ABC) in female and male patients. This sub-analysis describes...
This study determines the prognostic impact of body mass index (BMI) in patients with hormone receptor-positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor-2-negative (HR+/HER2−) advanced (i.e., metastatic) breast cancer (ABC). All patients with HR+/HER2− ABC who received endocrine therapy +—a cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor as first-given systemic therapy in 2007–2020 in the...
Extension of adjuvant endocrine therapy beyond five years confers only modest survival benefit in breast cancer patients and carries risk of toxicities. This systematic review investigates the role of biomarker tests in predicting the clinical response to an extension of endocrine therapy. We searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, Global Index Medicus, and the Cochrane Central...
Up to 40% of the 56,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the UK undergo mastectomy. Seroma formation following surgery is common, may delay wound healing, and be uncomfortable or delay the start of adjuvant treatment. Multiple strategies to reduce seroma formation include surgical drains, flap fixation and external compression exist but evidence to support best...
Up to 10% of all breast cancers (BC) are attributed to inherited pathogenic variants (PV) in BC susceptibility genes; however, most carriers of PVs remain unidentified. Here, we sought to determine the yield of hereditary cancer gene PVs among diverse women attending breast imaging centers, who could benefit from enhanced surveillance and/or risk reduction interventions. This...
The International Ki67 Working Group (IKWG) has developed training for immunohistochemistry (IHC) scoring reproducibility and recommends cut points of ≤ 5% and ≥ 30% for prognosis in ER+, HER2−, stage I/II breast cancer. We examined scoring reproducibility following IKWG training and evaluated these cut points for selecting patients for further testing with the 21-gene Recurrence...
The combination of trastuzumab and pertuzumab (HP) as part of a taxane-based regimen has shown benefit in the adjuvant and metastatic HER2 + breast cancer setting. In the CLEOPATRA trial, pruritus was reported in 11-17.6% of patients. The clinical phenotype and potential treatment strategies for this event have not been reported. A retrospective review of 2583 patients receiving...
Primary site surgery for metastatic breast cancer improves local control but does not impact overall survival. Whether histologic subtype influences patient selection for surgery is unknown. Given differences in surgical management between early-stage lobular versus ductal disease, we evaluated the impact of histology on primary site surgery in patients with metastatic breast...
We hypothesized that eribulin combined with cyclophosphamide (EC) would be an effective combination with tolerable toxicity for the treatment of advanced breast cancer (ABC). Patients with histologically confirmed metastatic or unresectable ABC with any number of prior lines of therapy were eligible to enroll. In the dose escalation cohort, dose level 0 was defined as eribulin 1...
Evidence supporting the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in early breast cancer is based on studies mainly including women, whereas the utilization and effectiveness of NAC in men is less studied. The present study aimed to investigate the utilization and effectiveness of NAC in men and women with early breast cancer. Eligible patients were identified through the Swedish...
Omitting sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) in breast cancer treatment results in patients with unknown positive nodal status and potential risk for systemic undertreatment. This study aimed to investigate whether gene expression profiles (GEPs) can lower this risk in cT1-2N0 ER+ HER2– breast cancer patients treated with BCT. Patients were included if diagnosed between 2011 and...
Molecular subtyping based on gene expression profiling (i.e., PAM50 assay) aids in determining the prognosis and treatment of breast cancer (BC), particularly in hormone receptor (HR)-positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative tumors, where luminal A and B subtypes have different prognoses and treatments. Several surrogate classifications have been proposed...
Compared to White women, there are higher mortality rates in Black/African American (BAA) women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer (HR + BC) which may be partially due to differences in treatment resistance. We assessed factors associated with response to neoadjuvant endocrine therapy (NET). The National Cancer Database (NCDB) was queried for women with clinical stage I...