Dr. Burris on Ongoing Research With ADCs in TNBC

Howard A. "Skip" Burris, III, MD, FASCO, FACP, chief medical officer and president, Clinical Operations, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, 2019 ASCO president-elect, and a 2014 Giant of Cancer Care® in Drug Development, discusses ongoing research with antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) in triple-negative breast cancer.

ADCs enable patients to receive chemotherapy for a longer period of time and in a better-tolerated fashion, says Burris. As such, patients won’t have to stop treatment due to adverse events. If an antibody binds well to the receptor on a cancer cell, the drug should not require much cytotoxic impact. Such is the case with some of the newer ADCs, adds Burris.

With regard to sacituzumab govitecan, the camptothecin background is attractive, says Burris, although they’ve historically not been used in a large way in breast cancer. Ladiratuzumab vedotin (SGN-LIV1A) is another ADC that has a tubulin inhibitor backbone. In an attempt to further reduce the toxicity of the therapy, investigators may want to look at giving that agent earlier when patients don’t have cumulative toxicity from prior taxane therapy, concludes Burris.