Understanding Novel Therapy Utility in HER2+ Breast Cancer Treatment

Advancing novel therapies into earlier treatment lines may help delay the need for chemotherapy and improve quality of life for patients. Moreover, these agents offer potentially well-tolerated options for patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

To delve further into the topic, Dr. Erika Hamilton sat down for an interview with CURE at the 24th Annual International Congress on the Future of Breast Cancer® East, where she highlighted what patients should know about breast cancer treatments currently in development.

Hamilton is a board-certified medical oncologist at SCRI Oncology and the director of Breast Cancer and Gynecologic Cancer Research at Sarah Cannon Research Institute, where she specializes in breast and gynecologic cancer treatment and research.

Transcript

What are some of the most promising breast cancer treatments currently in development, and how might they change care for patients in the future?

I think seeing some of our therapies move into earlier lines is really exciting. For example, we saw some SERENA-6 data at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting this year looking at camizestrant. We anticipate probably seeing SERENA-4 data in the next year for upfront camizestrant with CDK4/6 inhibition, as opposed to aromatase inhibitor (AI) and CDK4/6 inhibition. When we discuss these endocrine therapies, it's crucial for patients because our endocrine therapies tend to be the best-tolerated treatments.

Maximizing that time before patients need to move on to chemotherapy or an antibody-drug conjugate can really improve their quality of life. I'm excited about that, and certainly about new agents.

Despite the fact that we're doing so much better in breast cancer in the metastatic setting, we're still not curing our patients. Therefore, we need new therapies for sequencing. In the HER2-positive realm, this includes novel antibody-drug conjugates and novel drugs like Ziihera (zanidatamab-hrii), which have unique mechanisms of action. Ziihera, for instance, is a biparatopic antibody that targets both extracellular domain two and four. You can mentally think of it as Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Perjeta (pertuzumab) combined. I'm excited about some of these agents coming, particularly the ones that will be very well tolerated by our patients.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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