SABCS: San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

This year’s top content from the annual San Antonino Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) is concentrated in 3 areas: health equity, benign breast disease, and fertility preservation following diagnosis.

The 5-year event-free survival EFS) rate was 81.3% with neoadjuvant pembrolizumab/chemotherapy followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab compared with 72.3% in those who received placebo/chemotherapy plus placebo.

These findings suggest that addressing socioeconomic disparities and inequities that impact access to health care and services may help improve survival outcomes across racial/ethnic groups of male patients with early breast cancer.

Ana Ferrigno Guajardo, MD, discusses lingering questions following the results of a study on taxane chemotherapy interventions in patients with breast cancer during pregnancy.

Siddhartha Yadav, MD, discusses real-world data demonstrating the mass underutilization of BRCA testing in patients with breast cancer.

This phase 3 study investigated sacituzumab govitecan, a Trop-2–directed antibody-drug conjugate, vs treatment of physician’s choice in pretreated patients who have endocrine-resistant hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative breast cancer, the most common form of breast cancer.

At last year’s San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, POSITIVE trial primary outcome data were presented on breast cancer–free interval, with women who paused endocrine therapy to attempt pregnancy having a similarly small rate of recurrence vs external controls from the SOFT and TEXT trials: 8.9% vs 9.2%.

Gabriel Hortobagyi, MD, FACP, talks about the potential for further studies in HR-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer following the results of the NATALEE trial.

Stephanie Graff, MD, details insights from a study evaluating the perspectives and perceptions on clinical meaningfulness from patients, clinicians, and caregivers.

Despite there being a great demand for data collection on sexual orientation and gender identity in the cancer space, individuals who identify as a sexual and gender minority remain poorly represented.

Many questions remain surrounding accurately classifying the risk of developing invasive breast cancer associated with the benign breast disease diagnoses of nonproliferative lesions and proliferative changes without atypia.

Kelly-Anne Phillips, MD, shares new findings suggesting that hormonal contraceptive use can increase the risk for breast cancer in those with genetic variants of BRCA1 and BRCA2.

Sara Hurvitz, MD, FACP, shares insights into the results of the HER2CLIMB-02 trial, which saw patients with HER2-positive breast cancer benefit from the addition of tucatinib to trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1).

Disparities in 10-year local recurrence following breast-conserving surgery were seen among women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) treated over a nearly 4-decade span at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, with Black women having the highest rate.

A trio of speakers addressed the importance of social determinants of health (SDOH) in cancer care on day 1 of the 46th annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in the session, “Social Determinants of Health: Impact on Cancer Care.”

Virginia Kaklamani, MD, previews sessions of interest and overviews what to look forward to heading into the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) 2023.

The 46th annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium will take place December 5-9, with new and experienced attendees able to choose and learn from a schedule overflowing with the latest developments in breast cancer science and research.

The ongoing multicenter open-label adaptively randomized phase 2 I-SPY2 trial is currently investigating dual immune blockade with cemiplimab plus the investigational agent REGN3767 as neoadjuvant therapy for early-stage, high-risk breast cancer, and new data were presented yesterday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Babytam is the 5-mg daily dose of tamoxifen being studied in the ongoing TAM-01 study, which is investigating incidence of invasive breast cancer or ductal carcinoma in situ among high-risk women who have received the treatment regimen for 3 years.

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) within breast cancer settings can be instrumental in helping patients feel heard and improving their overall quality of care, said Oluwadamilola "Lola" Fayanju, MD, MA, MPHS, FACS, chief of breast surgery at Penn Medicine.

William Jacout, MD, a medical oncologist and researcher at the Institut du Cancer de Montpellier Val d'Aurelle in France, shares what providers should keep in mind when using genomics as a diagnostic and treatment decision-making tool for patients with breast cancer.

The utility of annual MRI plus mammogram was investigated in a new meta-analysis delivered at this year’s San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, with the goal of optimizing use of MRI by considering potential for overdiagnosis and tailoring to age and risk group.

Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-low breast disease has a number of new treatments available, and more providers need to be aware of how it differs from other forms of breast cancer, according to Adam Brufsky, MD, PhD, University of Pittsburgh, at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

With human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)–low breast cancer still a relatively newly classified disease subtype, research is increasingly focused on the disease, in which cells express lower levels of the HER2 protein than are adequate to classify a patient as having HER2-positive disease.

Jose P. Leone, MD, director of the program for breast cancer in men at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, shares why patients and providers need to pay more attention to how breast cancer impacts male patients.

A highlight of day 2 at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium was the morning presentation of a pair of studies highlighting the ongoing survival benefit associated with trastuzumab deruxtecan in metastatic breast cancer.

Dawn L. Hershman, MD, an oncologist from Columbia University, shared insight into the current challenge of ensuring drug adherence within clinical trials and how this adherence can impact the quality of care for patients in real-world settings.

Irene M. Kang, MD, from City of Hope, shared some of the results from her analysis of cognitive impairment in women with breast cancer who participated in the RxPonder study, which assessed which patients would benefit most from chemotherapy.

Costs are an adverse effect of treatment just like any other adverse effect, with slightly more patients worried about the financial impact of their cancer diagnosis than they are about actually dying from their disease, noted Fumiko Chino, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center.

Neil Iyengar, MD, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, is expecting updates on therapies to fight human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2)–positive breast cancer and novel antibody drug conjugates at the upcoming San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).