Dec 17, 2020
The annual meeting of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium was held virtually this year from Dec. 8 to 11 and attracted participants from around the world, including medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, researchers, and other health care professionals. The conference highlighted recent advances in the risk, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of breast cancer, with presentations focusing on emerging treatments in hard-to-treat patient populations, including patients with metastatic breast cancer.
As part of the RxPONDER study, Kevin Kalinsky, M.D., of the Glenn Family Breast Center at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues found that postmenopausal women with lymph node-positive early-stage breast cancer and a low recurrence score receive no additional benefit from chemotherapy.
December 10, 2020
Postmenopausal women may be able to skip some treatments, thereby avoiding some debilitating side effects, new research says.
Roy James Shakespeare/Getty Images
It may be possible for some postmenopausal women to avoid some breast cancer treatment without compromising survival, according to two new studies presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), hosted by UT Health San Antonio, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine.
The meeting was held virtually December 8 to 11.
One study found that postmenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer who were at low risk of recurrence can skip chemotherapy after surgery. The other found that older patients may be able to skip radiation therapy following breast-conserving surgery.
Some postmenopausal women with breast cancer do not benefit from chemotherapy when it’s added to hormone therapy, according to initial results of a clinical trial.
The findings apply to postmenopausal women with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative breast cancer that has spread to a limited number of lymph nodes, and whose recurrence risk is relatively low.
The findings may save tens of thousands of postmenopausal women each year the time, money, and harmful side effects that come with chemotherapy infusions.
This is the first evidence in a randomized phase III trial that postmenopausal women with HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer that has spread to one to three lymph nodes can safely forgo chemotherapy if their recurrence score on a genomic tumor tissue test is 25 or less.
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