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CURE’s breast cancer page is an extensive resource of cancer information featuring the latest breast cancer news, expert oncologist insights on the latest cancer treatments, oncology research, advocacy efforts, and medical data on breast cancer.

Last week, we saw some research regarding how a popular tool used to plan breast cancer treatment may be misguiding therapy for Black women, as well as an update on when we can expect to see a new cancer vaccine be readily available for patients.

And on the FDA front, we’ll discuss a priority review for Enhertu for patients with HER2-positive solid cancers, as well as a fast track designation for a new drug duo in the lung cancer space.

Cancer Vaccine Likely ‘Several Years’ Away From Wide Availability

ELI-002 is a vaccine being investigated for the treatment of patients with KRAS-mutant pancreatic or colorectal cancers. While cancer vaccines have been in the headlines a lot in recent months, this one, at least, is still a ways away from being readily available for patients across the United States.

Findings from a phase 1 trial showed that the vaccine could be beneficial for this patient population, and now, a phase 2 trial recently started that will evaluate the efficacy of an injection version of ELI-002, compared to observation. The first patient was dosed in the trial in January 2024, so it could still be several more years until the drug is available, Dr. Christopher Haqq, chief medical officer and vice president, head of research and development at Elicio Therapeutics, said in an interview with CURE®.

“We'll be talking to the regulators like the US Food and Drug Administration and others around the world to align on the data that we'll need to provide for a marketing application. And so, we haven't had that input yet. So I can't give an exact answer for you (on when the vaccine will be commercially available). But we'll work as fast as possible. It's even possible that the type of evidence that we gather in this randomized study could serve that purpose. But we won't know until we have further discussion,” he said.

Test May Be ‘Misguiding’ Breast Cancer Treatment for Black Women

A recent study showed that the 21-gene breast recurrence score may lead clinicians away from prescribing chemotherapy to Black women who may benefit from the treatment.

The 21-gene breast recurrence score is the standard test to help guide treatment decisions for patients with estrogen receptor-positive (also known as ER-positive) disease. Most patients with ER-positive cancer undergo hormone therapy, but the outcomes for this test may help decide if a patient would benefit from additional chemotherapy, too. Now, findings from a recent study discovered that Black women — and younger Black women, in particular — may be missing out on chemotherapy that they could potentially benefit from.

Now, this research team is conducting further research looking at potential molecular differences in breast cancer in Black women, as well as how other social disparities could be playing into an increased risk of breast cancer death in these women.

FDA Grants Priority Review to Enhertu for HER2-Positive Solid Cancers

The Food and Drug Administration granted a priority review for a supplemental biologics license to Enhertu for the treatment of patients with previously treated metastatic HER2-positive solid tumors that cannot be removed via surgery. Basically what that means is that the drug showed promise in a clinical trial, and now the FDA will work with the pharmaceutical company developing the drug to expedite the review and potential approval of the agent. The agency plans on making its decision on whether or not Enertu will be approved some time in the second quarter of this year.

Enertu is an antibody drug conjugate, which is a type of drug that works by finding and binding to certain proteins found on cancer cells — in this case, the HER2 protein. The drug was previously approved for patients with lung cancer and metastatic breast cancer, and now, the phase 2 DESTINY-PanTumo02 trial will help determine if it will be approved for patients with endometrial, cervical, ovarian, bladder, biliary tract, pancreatic or other cancers that are HER2 positive.

FDA Grants Fast Track Designation to Avutometinib-Lumakras Combo

Also in the regulatory space, the FDA granted a fast track designation to a two drug combination consisting of Lumakras and the novel agent, avutometinib for patients with KRAS G12C-mutant metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. The intended patient population for the regimen is those who have been treated with at least one systemic therapy and have not received a KRAS G12C inhibitor.

The regimen is being investigated in the ongoing phase 1/2 RAMP 203 trial, which will analyze the effectiveness of the drug, as well as the overall response rate — which is the percentage of patients whose cancer decreases from the drug — and safety. Findings from the second phase of the trial, which is specifically looking at patients who have not received or did not respond to a KRAS G12-inhibitor are expected to be published some time in the first half of 2024.

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to 

One cancer vaccine may still be years away from being available, a breast cancer test may be misguiding treatments for Black women and the review of two oncology regimens are being expedited by the FDA. 

FDA, Cancer Vaccine Updates and a Misguiding of Breast Cancer Treatment

The last week was a busy one for us here at CURE® and across the oncology space in general. There were two major meetings we covered: the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting.

The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium — also known as SABCS — features breast cancer research conducted around the globe. We had editors on the ground in San Antonio, as well as back in our office covering the meeting. Here are some highlights from SABCS.

And, to view all of our conference coverage, be sure to check out curetoday.com/conference

Kadcyla Is the ‘First Therapy to Show Improved Survival’ in a Breast Cancer Subset

For in patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer that still had remaining invasive disease after undergoing neoadjuvant therapy Kadcyla outperformed Herceptin when it came to overall survival, which is the time until death of any cause, and invasive disease-free survival, which is the time patients live without experience metastases or invasive disease.

The findings, which come out of the KATHERINE trial, mark the “first therapy to show an improved survival after post-surgical therapy in patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer and residual invasive disease after neoadjuvant therapy,” according to study author, Dr. Sibylle Loibl, who presented the findings at SABCS.

More specifically, at the 8.4-year follow-up mark, 70.1% of patients in the Kadcyla group and 62% in the Herceptin group were still alive. Also at that point, 32.2% given Kadcyla did not develop invasive disease, compared with 19.7% of patients in the Herceptin group.

Keytruda, Chemo Show Early-Stage Breast Cancer Event-Free Survival Benefits

Findings from phase 3 KEYNOTE-522 trial showed that presurgical Keytruda plus chemotherapy, followed by postsurgical Keytruda led to improved event-free survival — that’s time a patient lives without complications from their disease — in patients with high-risk, early-stage triple-negative breast cancer.

At a median follow-up of 63.1 months, the five-year event-free survival rate was 81.3% with neoadjuvant Keytruda/chemotherapy followed by adjuvant Keytruda compared with 72.3% in those who received placebo/chemotherapy and then placebo. These findings, according to Dr. Peter Schmid, further support the use of this Keytruda regimen as the standard of care for this patient population.

Tecentriq Plus Perjeta, Herceptin, Chemo Does Not Improve pCR in HER2+ Breast Cancer

Another phase 3 trial — the APTneo Michelangelo — showed that adding Tecentriq and Herceptin to Perjeta and chemotherapy actually did not lead to a statistically significant improvement in pathologic complete response (that’s the disappearance of cancer) when given in the presurgical setting for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

The study found that while Tecentriq and Herceptin-containing regimens did lead to a higher number of pathologic complete responses, these difference between the two treatment groups was not statistically significant, meaning that the researchers could not definitively say that one therapy was the result of better outcomes.

No Racial Difference in Recurrence-Free Survival in HR+, HER2- Breast Cancer

While research has shown that Black and White patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer tend to have different survival outcomes, research presented at SABCS found that three-year recurrence-free survival is actually comparable between the two groups.


“More aggressive treatment can improve outcomes for (patients with HR-positive, basal-type tumors), as demonstrated by improved (overall survival) in (those who) achieved pathologic complete response,” study investigators stated in the poster. “These data highlight the importance of genomic testing to help optimize treatment and reduce outcome disparities in Black women.”

SABCS

CURE® recently covered the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. In case you missed it, here is some news that came out of the conference that patients should know about. 

Conference Highlights from SABCS

For patients with metastatic breast cancer, the annual October observance of Breast Cancer Awareness Month can bring a complex mix of emotions.

“I think a lot of the messaging in October tends to focus on pink, and it almost looks a little sparkly,” said Sally Joy Wolf, who first received a diagnosis of breast cancer eight years ago before learning it had metastasized five years ago.

Wolf, to be clear, doesn’t think there is any malicious intent behind what she described as the “sea of pink” in October.

“I really like to believe that everyone who is trying to wait raise awareness or trying to do anything on behalf of anything, any cause, any cancer — but in my case, breast cancer — the intentions are good,” she said. “But there are many points in life where good intentions may not have the intended results simply because people don't have a level of intimate awareness that that comes from being on the inside.”

In the U.S., there will be an estimated 297,790 new cases of breast cancer, comprising 15.2% of all new cancer cases, and 43,170 deaths from breast cancer, or 7.1% of all cancer deaths, in 2023 among female patients with breast cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute, which also stated that metastatic breast cancer (cancer which has spread to other parts of the body and is also referred to as stage 4 breast cancer) has a five-year survival rate of 31%.

“For me, every month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month,” said Wolf. “Because I am dealing with an appointment or a scan, or medicine refill or an insurance mistake. So even though I am thriving, and really I am flourishing, and living a life that I love and I consider myself healthy … when I'm then looking out at a landscape where everything is pink … it's a little bit like a celebration of how far we've come, of how curable this is, of how early detection is great. And that's all true, decades of awareness have benefited all of us, including me because I'm on medicines that might not otherwise exist, but it's also easy for someone in my shoes to look at the month of October and feel like we don't quite fit. We're not celebrating being cured.”

Dr. Dawn Mussallem, a lifestyle medicine and integrative breast cancer specialist at the Robert and Monica Jacoby Center for Breast Health at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, explained how she has observed the ways in which her patients with metastatic breast cancer have felt left out of the broader breast cancer community.

“When meeting these women for the first time, they share with me exactly what you are alluding to: the lack of supervised, positive support available for women with metastatic breast cancer, or a community they can belong to with other likeminded women going through the same thing,” Mussallem told CURE® via email. “The narrative shared with these women is different than for women with early-stage breast cancer.

“You see (for) women with early stage 1 to 3 breast cancer, the medical team informs them (that) cancer cure is likely/probable with appropriate treatment; however, women with metastatic breast cancer get told something no one should ever hear because it can, in some situations, dampen any sense of hope: ‘You have stage 4 breast cancer and this is something we can’t cure.’”

a cancer survivor as well as a bone marrow and heart transplant recipient

“We can’t change the circumstances of a cancer diagnosis,” she said. “It isn’t going to just go away. Once it is there, it is there until it is gone. We can succumb to the diagnosis, or we can use it as a springboard of growth, an opportunity to look deeply inward and make each and every breath mean something bigger and better than we ever imagine. It is a shame it takes cancer to do this, but cancer is a magical teacher of life. There is no better way to embrace one’s aliveness then to hear those words, ‘You have cancer.’ I know because I am a 23-year stage 4 diffuse B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor. My cancer journey allows me to talk openly about the fear of dying and the glory of living now.”

Wolf, a longtime New York media executive, is now focused of advocating for wellbeing as a coach, advisor and speaker through LightWorks, where she is the founder and CEO.

“Sometimes it's a harder choice than others, but when we choose to see that light, even just like the tiny spark that may exist in a day, it is so helpful, because we come to realize that nothing is unilaterally light or dark or good or bad or all these labels we like to put on them and put on our lives as humans,” she said. “And even cancer, even in a metastatic cancer situation that I wish I weren’t in but I am, I can lean into meaning, lean into purpose, lean into gratitude and light. … ‘And I can say, this isn’t the life I expected to be leading. And yet, how grateful am I? How fortunate am I to get to live this life and get to make this impact with this card that I’ve been dealt?’ And I’m proud of how I’m playing it, so to speak.”

Wolf spoke with CURE’s “Cancer Horizons” podcast about her cancer journey so far, her life as a patient with metastatic breast cancer and the importance of life’s silver linings.

Sally Joy Wolf, who has metastatic breast cancer, tells CURE about how some patients can feel adrift during the annual October “sea of pink.”

‘For Me, Every Month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month’

Kathy Steligo has been keeping patients with breast cancer informed for more than 20 years. Steligo, a two-time breast cancer survivor, is the author of “The Complete Guide to Breast Reconstruction: Choosing the Best Options After Your Mastectomy.”

Originally released as “The Breast Reconstruction Guidebook: Issues and Answers from Research to Recovery,” Steligo’s book is now in its fifth edition, which was recently released via Johns Hopkins University Press.

Steligo, also the co-author of “Living with Hereditary Cancer Risk” and “The Breast Cancer Book,” spoke with CURE®’s “Cancer Horizons” podcast about the latest iteration of the book and her continuing efforts to empower patients with information.

“My whole goal in (writing) this book since 2001 for the first edition has always been to give women and men a comprehensive and objective guide to what their options are. I'm not pushing breast reconstruction. I'm not recommending people do one thing or the other. What I want women (and men) to know is what their options are and give them information so that they can make their own decisions.”

For example, in “The Complete Guide to Breast Reconstruction” Steligo offers insight into patients’ postmastectomy options — such as “going flat,” utilization of prostheses and reconstruction.

Many Women Are Satisfied After 'Going Flat' Post-Mastectomy, Study Finds

“I'm not a physician, but my opinion is anytime anybody is involved in a health decision, they need to advocate for themselves,” Steligo told CURE.

She explained that, in her opinion, “doctors are like anybody else — they're like lawyers or gardeners (in that) they're not all the same. … I talked to a lot of patients, and I know that sadly, a lot of surgeons do not talk to women about going flat. A lot of surgeons are still stuck on the issue of (thinking) all women want big boobs. And so therefore this is what patients tell me.”

Some Women With Breast Cancer Report Experiencing ‘Flat Denial’ From Surgeons Post-Mastectomy

Steligo said she advises patients to seek out at least two to three consultations, and explained her reasoning with an analogy.

“If you go in to buy a Ford and you go into a Ford dealer, he's not going to tell you about the Chevy dealer down the street, or the Hyundai or whatever it is,” she said. “And you know, surgeons are no different. There are wonderful surgeons out there that will tell women all of their options and encourage them to get different opinions. But not all surgeons discuss going flat; not all surgeons discuss different options.

“Typically, surgeons will discuss in length the procedures that they do. They're not as likely to discuss at length procedures that they don't do. And that's why I think women have to advocate and research and dig into information to really know what's available to them, because I've had many patients tell me, ‘I had this surgery. I didn't know until years later that I could have had something else, nobody told me.’ So you have to find out.”

Now in its fifth edition, “The Complete Guide to Breast Reconstruction: Choosing the Best Options After Your Mastectomy” by two-time breast cancer survivor Kathy Steligo offers patients comprehensive, up-to-date information.

‘The Complete Guide to Breast Reconstruction’ Author Empowers Patients With Information

The work continues, and evolves, for the team at Latinas Contra Cancer as the service and advocacy organization working with Latino patients with cancer approaches its 20th anniversary later this year.

“The needs have changed,” executive director Darcie Green, who has been with the organization for five years, told 

®. “It's important for organizations to do this continuous check-in to see, 'Is our mission still needed? Have parts of it been accomplished, have the needs of the people we're serving changed?'”

Founded in 2003 by journalist and cancer survivor Ysabel Duron and based in San Jose, California, Latinas Contra Cancer has, according to its website, “educated over 7,500 individuals about cancer, resulting in hundreds of preventive screenings and many early detections.”

The organization piloted a patient navigator program at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Sobrato Cancer Center which was purportedly the first of its kind in 2010, trained more than 200 community health educators across the country, hosted National Latino Cancer Summits and opened a wig and prosthesis boutique.

Green’s connection to the work of Latinas Contra Cancer is deeply personal.

“My grandmother passed away of breast cancer, and while she was battling breast cancer and looking for a support community, she was in the very first support group ever held by LCC,” Green said. “And so, I know firsthand how important that work was at the time, and how really revolutionary it was, even defiant in a way, that patients deserved access to care in their language and in ways that weren't just based out of hospital settings and clinic settings, which can be traumatic for some people, you know, in itself.”

Green said that although Latinas Contra Cancer’s original mission of health education, research and fostering relationships between patients and providers was largely focused on individual behavior, and that work remains, in the modern medical landscape “the language around culturally and linguistically competent care is very normalized, at least here in the area where we're at. We know there are other places in the country that are lagging far behind. But for where we where we are, it's normalized, and many organizations have patient navigators.”

The overall mission, however, has “changed pretty radically” during her time with the organization, as Green explained.

“We have evolved to focus much more on systems and still holding up the importance of individual behavior but recognizing that you really can't individual behavior your way out of health injustice and systemic health disparities, that these are less about the problems with patients and more about a healthcare system that is just not adequately meeting the needs of all of its patients,” she said.

“And so, as we have started to look more at systems, and how we could have patients doing everything right — like my grandmother, right, everything was healthy: healthy lifestyle, maintaining a healthy diet, didn't smoke, drink, didn't do any of those things — and (they) still got breast cancer. … We're still doing service providing, we're still doing health education and patient navigation and patient advocacy, and all of those programs have evolved as you would expect. And we've added this other space of programming that is our first venture into what's not service providing outside of research. And so, we are full speed ahead into this area of patient organizing.”

’s “Cancer Horizons” podcast, Green tells us about the evolving mission of Latinas Contra Cancer and story of the organization’s Defensoras health advocacy cohort, a 10-week training program launched in 2021.

“As an organization, we have been very much changed by the (COVID-19) pandemic, because our population is the medically vulnerable, immunocompromised folks, and Latino and low-income,” Green said. “And in this area, we know that the Latino community was hit the hardest economically as well. And so ethically, our response to that has been: 'It's not enough just to help people navigate health disparity. It's not enough just to help people navigate what we know to be a completely predictable, preventable injustice. We have to eliminate it.' And not we as LCC, not we the individual employees at LCC, we have to start holding space for patients to become powerful, and to eliminate those disparities for themselves.”

Darcie Green, executive director of service and advocacy organization Latinas Contra Cancer, tells the CURE® “Cancer Horizon” podcast about how its work has broadened over the last 20 years.

Latinas Contra Cancer ‘Holds Space for Patients to Become Powerful’

Kelly Thomas wasn’t expecting to be on this side of the breast cancer experience.

A woman without a family history of breast cancer shares how she went from volunteering at breast cancer walks to one day finding herself in the shoes of someone living with the disease.

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