Dr Neil Iyengar Previews SABCS Presentation on Metabolic Dysregulation in Breast Cancer

Neil Iyengar, MD, associate attending physician, Breast Medical Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center, discusses his upcoming presentations on metabolic dystregulation in breast cancer and the results from MSK's Healthy Living Program, including patients with breast cancer, at this year's San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

Transcript

What will you be presenting at SABCS?

We have a couple of presentations at San Antonio. One of them I'll be a discussant on a panel that's reviewing obesity-related studies in breast cancer. And there are a lot of exciting abstracts from several groups that will be presented that are both characterizing in more specific ways the implications of metabolic dysregulation on breast cancer outcomes, as well as response to breast cancer treatments. As well as several studies that are looking at various interventions for obesity and metabolic dysfunction in the setting of breast cancer, with a goal of improving breast cancer–related outcomes.

Our group will also be presenting data on the MSK Healthy Living Program, where we'll be showing the dietary patterns and the physical activity patterns of participants in the Healthy Living Program and how the program has been able to favorably modify those lifestyle parameters during and after breast cancer treatment.

What are you looking forward to seeing from others at SABCS?

There's a lot that will be presented at San Antonio, both from a therapeutic standpoint as well as a quality-of-life and patient-reported outcomes standpoint. I think all of this data will be very exciting to see. From the therapeutic standpoint, we're going to get updates in the treatment of HER2 [human epidermal growth factor receptor 2]-positive breast cancer and specifically, we'll see updates in novel antibody drug conjugates [ADCs], as well as ADCs that we are already using in clinics, such as trastuzumab deruxtecan. We're going to be seeing long-term survival data from several of those trials, which I think will be important when understanding how to sequence our therapies in clinic.

We're also going to be seeing a lot of data with regard to metastatic hormone receptor–positive breast cancer and the use of various novel endocrine therapies, such as oral SERDs [selective estrogen receptor downregulators], as well as SERMs [selective estrogen receptor modulators] and other estrogen-related modifiers such as PROTACs [proteolysis targeting chimeras]. And I think that this will be really helpful to understand all of the data that's been coming out in the last year with regard to this novel class of drugs and how we may be able to extend the time in metastatic hormone receptor–positive breast cancer before we need to reach for traditional cytotoxic therapies like chemotherapy. So those are the sorts of things that I'm particularly interested in from the therapeutic standpoint.

From the population standpoint, as well as the lifestyle standpoint, I'm looking forward to seeing the data that will be presented with regard to obesity-related interventions in breast cancer. It's a bright and early 7 o'clock in the morning session, but it will be recorded, and I think we'll see some exciting data there in terms of how we can implement, in our own practice, lifestyle modification for our patients with breast cancer.