Howard “Skip” A. Burris, III, MD, chief medical officer, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, 2019 ASCO president-elect, and a 2014 Giant of Cancer Care® in Drug Development, discusses breast cancer data presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting.

The results of the TAILORx trial signify the end of overtreatment with chemotherapy in many patients with breast cancer, Burris says. This study showed that adjuvant endocrine therapy alone is noninferior to adjuvant chemoendocrine therapy in patients with hormone receptor—positive, HER2-negative, node-negative early-stage breast cancer who have an intermediate risk of distant recurrence.

The phase III SANDPIPER trial showed interesting results in patients with estrogen receptor—positive, PIK3CA-mutant locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer, Burris says. Patients who received taselisib (GDC-0032) in combination with endocrine therapy demonstrated a median progression-free survival of 7.4 months (95% CI, 7.26-9.07) compared with 5.4 months (95% CI, 3.68-7.29) in those who received fulvestrant (Faslodex) in combination with placebo (HR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.56-0.89; P = .0037).

Lastly, findings from the PERSEPHONE trial showed that a shorter 6-month course of adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) was found to be noninferior for disease-free survival compared with the standard 12-month schedule for patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer. Burris says that advances in HER2-positive breast cancer continue to be encouraging year after year.