Dr. Adams on Combinatorial Approaches in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

Sylvia Adams, MD, associate professor, Department of Medicine, director, Clinical Research, Breast Cancer Disease Management Group, NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, discusses combinatorial approaches in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

Physicians have been looking at immunotherapy combinations with chemotherapy because chemotherapy is the main standard of care for these women, explains Adams. These drugs can stimulate immune response and keep women stable until the immune medications work. In a phase Ib trial with 32 women, about one-half of the patients had a response to treatment in the first-line setting. Many women are alive at 1 and 2 years, which is not that common with standard chemotherapies, says Adams.

Physicians still have to further evaluate biomarkers. Adams hopes that there will be trials with an emphasis on tissue-based correlative studies, so physicians can figure out which patients respond and be able to predict that response in advance. For the other patients, physicians have to figure out other targets. Adams notes that T cells do not only have PD-1/PD-L1 as targets, they can have many others such as TIM-3 or LAG-3. Those are important to target as well, explains Adams.