Dr. Ueno on the Residual Cancer Burden and Immunotherapy in Inflammatory Breast Cancer

Naoto Ueno, MD, PhD, FACP, executive director, Morgan Welch Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Program and Clinic, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses residual cancer burden and immunotherapy in inflammatory breast cancer.

Residual cancer burden index provides a more detailed pathological finding to determine the amount of disease left after surgery and/or neoadjuvant therapy. It is an accurate long-term predictor of disease recurrence and survival of patients with breast cancer. However, what researchers found during a recent multivariate analysis is that T4 tumors remain to be an independent prognostic factor of breast cancer. Now, there is confirmation that inflammatory breast cancer still remains to have poor prognosis.

The KEYNOTE-522 trial also included T4 tumors and inflammatory breast cancer. While the study is not conclusive, the primitive results show that immunotherapy was the most effective in terms of improving pathological complete response in breast cancer. This is promising because achieving high pathological complete response in inflammatory breast cancer is challenging. The whole field is becoming more defined by different investigators working on this topic, concludes Ueno.