HER2+ Metastatic Breast Cancer: Unmet Needs and Future Directions in Care

Transcript:

Virginia Kaklamani, MD, DSc: In the next 5 years, I'm envisioning fewer patients developing metastatic HER2+ breast cancer, and I think with some of the clinical trials that are ongoing, looking at tucatinib and T-DXd [trastuzumab deruxtecan] in the early-stage setting, as well as some the incorporation of immunotherapy, I'm hoping that improves outcomes even more. Therefore, the number of patients with either de novo metastatic disease or developing metastatic disease after initial therapy will be smaller. Unfortunately, we will still have patients with de novo metastatic disease that we must treat. There, I envision seeing T-DXd moving in that first-line setting. I also assume that some of these agents are currently in development and will be become standard of care in the second, third-line setting. There are trials combining tucatinib and T-DXd that I'm excited about. We're doing well and overall survival benefit of more than 5 years is a long way that we've come, but there definitely is room to do better.

The challenge in treating patients with HER2+ breast cancer is the development of brain metastases. We know that 50% of our patients are going to develop brain metastases and we're still limited as far as how to treat them both with local therapy and systemic therapy. At the same time, we know that at some point, these tumors will become resistant to our therapies and we will have to sequence our therapies to be able to treat the disease effectively. This is an aggressive disease, so development of resistance is something we need to understand better. Also, treatment of brain metastases is something we need to do better with.

Thank you for joining me. I hope you found this OncLive® My Treatment Approach program to be useful and valuable to the management of your patients with metastatic breast cancer.

Transcript edited for clarity.