Dr. Gradishar on Personalized Treatment in Breast Cancer

William J. Gradishar, MD, chief of hematology and oncology, Department of Medicine, Betsy Bramsen Professorship of Breast Oncology, professor of medicine (hematology and oncology), Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, discusses the rise of personalized treatment in breast cancer.

Over the last 20 years, HER2-positive breast cancer has emerged as a new subset of breast cancer. Though researchers came to understand that this disease is a separate entity, not much headway had been made in terms of targeted treatment. The explosion of new therapies in this setting has improved outcomes for patients, Gradishar says. Similarly, hormone receptor—positive breast cancer has also seen a rise of personalized therapeutic options. Mainly, anti–hormonal therapy has been combined with targeted agents. These strategies are also making their way into the adjuvant setting of estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer, notes Gradishar.

An area that needs more work, Gradishar says, is triple-negative breast cancer. This is a disease with a number of different entities, and researchers need to figure out the drivers of those internal entities to develop targeted therapies.