Dr. Hope Rugo Previews the 2012 SABCS Program

The 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) will contain exciting talks that will provide participants with a useful understanding of the current state of breast cancer research, states Hope S. Rugo, MD, clinical professor and director of the Breast Oncology Clinical Trials Program at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

The 2012 SABCS will span from Tuesday, December 4, until Saturday, December 8. On Wednesday Rugo notes that results from a phase II study will be presented looking at PD 0332991, a selective inhibitor of the CDK4 and 6 kinases, in combination with letrozole as a first-line treatment for hormone receptor positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer. Following this talk, the results from the phase III LEA trial that studied the addition of bevacizumab to endocrine therapy as a first-line treatment for breast cancer will also be presented.

A number of other presentations on Wednesday plan to examine the proliferation marker Ki67, including the GeparTrio trial that examined Ki67 as a predictive and prognostic parameter in the neoadjuvant setting. Additionally, an international consortium study will be presented discussing the standardization of testing tools for Ki67, Rugo notes.

Several presentations on Thursday plan to address radiotherapy for early breast cancer, Rugo points out. The first is the international START trial that seeks to standardize a hypofractionated radiotherapy approach. The second will provide an update from the TARGIT-A trial, which analyzed local recurrence and survival following intraoperative radiotherapy.

On Friday, Rugo highlights talks that will discuss biomarker and immune checkpoint analyses from the NeoSphere and CLEOPATRA trials, which examined the HER dimerization inhibitor pertuzumab (Perjeta). The CLEOPATRA trial was instrumental in the approval of pertuzumab for use in combination with trastuzumab and docetaxel for patients with previously untreated HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. The phase II NeoSphere trial examined the combination of pertuzumab plus trastuzumab before surgery for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

The duration of adjuvant treatment with trastuzumab will be the topic of two presentations on Friday, which were also presented at the 2012 ESMO Congress. These presentations will include an 8 year follow up from the HERA trial that studied 1 versus 2 years of adjuvant trastuzumab following chemotherapy for women with HER2-positive early breast cancer and a subset analysis of the PHARE trial that compared 6 months to 12 months of adjuvant trastuzumab for early HER2-positive breast cancer.

In addition to the larger plenary sessions, the last day of the meeting will feature several summary talks looking at the advances and discoveries made over the course of the entire year.

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View coverage from the 2012 SABCS