Dr. Bardia on the Need to Develop Additional Therapies in Metastatic TNBC

Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, director of Precision Medicine at the Center for Breast Cancer and founding director of the Molecular and Precision Medicine Metastatic Breast Cancer Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and assistant professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses the need to develop additional therapies for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

Of all breast cancer subtypes, TNBC is associated with the most aggressive tumor biology, says Bardia.

TNBC commonly affects African American patients, as well as young women​, Bardia says. Moreover, ​patients with ​metastatic TNBC ​tend to have poor prognosis and are at high risk of recurrence.

​Frontline immunotherapy, PARP inhibitors, and chemotherapy are standard treatment options for these patients. Unlike other subtypes, hormonal therapy, HER2-targeted therapy, and PI3K inhibitors ​are not available to patients with TNBC, Bardia says.

However, the median progression-free survival with chemotherapy ​remains low, at 2 to 3 months. As such, the armamentarium remains an unmet need in the space, Bardia concludes.