Dr. White On RTOG 1119 Trial for Breast Cancer

Julia White, MD, professor of Radiation Oncology, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses RTOG-1119 trial for patients with breast cancer.

RTOG-1119, is an ongoing randomized phase II trial focusing on adding lapatinib (Tykerb) to whole-brain radiation therapy to improve cancer control of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who have brain metastases. In HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, there is an increasing number of agents that extend progression-free survival and overall survival, but there is still a high rate of failure in the brain for this subtype of cancer, White explains.

The standard of care for brain metastases is radiotherapy initiated to the whole brain. However, stereotactic surgery targets the cancer with conformal radiation. What this study wants to discover is whether the addition of lapatinib to radiation therapy can extend cancer control in the brain, says White.