Administration of the cameshumous experimental pill of astrazene patients with breast cancer, at the first sign of resistance to standard therapies, has halved the risk of disease progression or death.
Astrazeneca PHOTO: X
It is for the first time that a blood test, the so-called liquid biopsy, indicates the need to change treatment in women with positive and HER2-Negative Heron-receiver breast cancer, before tumors are visible on the imaging, writes News.
Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky, an oncologist at Valley-Mount Sinai Comprehensive Cancer who said that this early approach reduced the disease progression or death by 56%.
“When patients progress on scans, we are already behind. This early change allows us to stay before the disease,” she said in a briefing.
The camizerrant, who is not yet approved by the FDA, could become a new standard of care, Teplinsky believes. The study included 3,256 patients with advanced breast cancer, the most common form, fed hormones such as estrogen, but without high levels of HER2.
All patients had received at least six months of treatment with aromatase inhibitors and targeted drugs (CDK4/6 inhibitors), such as Kisqali from Novartis, Ibrance from Pfizer or Verzenio from Eli Lilly. About 40% of these patients develop mutations of the estrogen receptor gene (ESR1), which signals early drug resistance.
The researchers identified 315 patients with ESR1 mutations and randomly divided them: either they received Camizeststrant plus the CDK4/6 inhibitor, or continued the standard Plus Placebo treatment. The disease progressed after 16 months in the camizeststrant group, compared to 9.2 months in the standard group, a statistically significant difference. No new side effects have been reported, and few patients discontinued treatment.
“It is an excellent news for our patients. The question is how to integrate testing into clinical practice” said Dr. Hope Rugo from City of Hope in California.
The future of oncological treatments
The Astrazeneca CEO, Pascal Soriot, acknowledged that monitoring of drug resistance before cancer progression requires a paradigm change, but “It represents the future of oncological treatments.”
“At first it will be complicated, but over time it will become a standard,” he said.
In another study presented at the same conference, adding the immunotherapy (Durvalumab) to standard treatment before and after operation in patients with gastric and esophageal cancer reduced the risk of recurrence or progression by 29%, compared to chemotherapy alone.
The results were presented by Dr. Yelena Janjigian from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
“These data show that immunotherapy also works in the early stages, which is extraordinary,” Janjigian said. Both studies were published on Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
