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Improving Treatment Access to Innovative Therapies in Breast Cancer

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Dr. Maxwell Lloyd shared the importance of improving patient access to innovative therapies like Orserdu at the 2024 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Therapeutic options such as Orserdu (elacestrant) are continuing to push the envelope in breast cancer care. For example, in a real-world setting, Orserdu had comparable or slightly better time to treatment discontinuation and time to next treatment than the what was reported in the phase 3 EMERALD trial for patients with HR-positive/HER2-negative advanced breast cancer and ESR1 mutations. Notably, these data were shared in a presentation at the 2024 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Glossary

Progression-free survival: time during which a patient’s disease does not worsen.

Real-world time to next treatment: time from starting treatment to starting the next therapy.

Real-world time to treatment discontinuation: time from starting treatment to stopping it for any reason.

It is data like these that emphasize the importance of providing access to these life-saving treatment options for patients with breast cancer, according to Dr. Maxwell Lloyd. Lloyd sat down for an interview with CURE® at the 2024 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, in which he shared the importance of improving patient access to innovative therapies such as Orserdu.

Lloyd is a Clinical Fellow in Medicine, in the Department of Medicine, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Transcript:

[Orserdu (elacestrant)] and other therapies are part of a biomarker-based therapeutic strategy that's continuing to emerge for patients with advanced breast cancer. Improving access to not only the medication, but also to the companion diagnostic treatment that's needed in order to adopt these therapies is something that is very important, especially in our community or rural settings that may not have the [same] infrastructure or resources as bigger, larger tertiary academic centers.

Both oncologists and our industry partners, as well as advocacy networks, need to continue to push and advocate for having these treatments covered by their insurance companies. [It is important to advocate for] having adequate access to these therapies, knowing that they can have significant benefit, for helping people live longer, better lives with control of their breast cancer.

Transcript was edited for clarity and conciseness.

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