Medical Oncology
Physician insights on cancer treatment protocols, immunotherapy, targeted therapies, and clinical trial updates.
Recent Discussions
Do you provide prophylactic anticoagulation with abemaciclib in the adjuvant setting given known thrombosis risk?
I don’t generally recommend prophylactic anticoagulation with abema, either in the adjuvant or metastatic setting. There does appear to be a small, but real, incidence of thrombosis associated with abema, as well as the other CDK 4/6 inhibitors. While this risk is quite uncommon, it is important cer...
How do you decide whether to offer tamoxifen or OFS + AI in premenopausal patients with metastatic ER+ HER2+ breast cancer as your endocrine therapy?
In general, for node-positive premenopausal women, I use AI and OS. For node-negative patients, I generally use tam + OS for oncotypes 16-21 (the group where we saw a 2% benefit from chemo in TAILORx) and AI + OS for oncotypes 21-25 (where we saw a 7% benefit from chemo in TAILORx). It seems from SO...
What would be your treatment approach in a premenopausal BRCA2+ patient with cT2N0 grade 2-3, ER negative, PR variably positive (30%; staining weak to high), HER2 negative breast cancer?
Since weakly hormone-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer behaves more similarly to triple-negative breast cancer than strongly hormone receptor-positive breast cancer (Poterala et al., PMID 35676188), I would approach this patient similarly to patients with stage 2 triple-negative breast cancer. I...
Would you avoid chemotherapy in a postmenopausal woman age >65 with T3 HR+/HER2 negative with Oncotype DX < 25?
Prior to RxPONDER, we had to speculate: https://www.themednet.org/question/8265. We have more data now. RxPONDER included T3 patients (252 or 5% were T3) (Supplementary Appendix). So my answer mirrors that of the Oncotype website: "Postmenopausal women with 1 to 3 positive nodes and Recurrence Score...
How do you manage endocrine therapy for a perimenopausal woman with ER+ breast CA?
In lower risk patients to whom I would not routinely give chemotherapy - stage I-IIA, with a low or low-intermediate risk Oncotype score - I start tamoxifen and switch to an aromatase inhibitor (except in very low risk patients in whom the benefit of switching would be negligible) when they are clin...
What adjuvant endocrine therapy would you recommend for patients who have undergone prior gastrectomy?
This is challenging with no good evidence based recommendations to my knowledge. In the past, with a patient post gastrectomy, I have elected to do tamoxifen therapy and checked absorption level by checking endoxifen level after a few weeks on therapy.
Does germline BRCA 1/2 mutation status impact your use of OncoType Dx for early stage ER positive breast cancers in post-menopausal women?
Germline BRCA1/2 associated tumors tend to have higher grade and higher Oncotype recurrence score (RS). One of the reported studies out of MSKCC showed higher median Recurrence Score (RS) for mutation carriers versus controls (24 vs 16; P < .0001). Since RS is both prognostic and predictive, BRCA1/2...
Would a low or intermediate OncoType RS affect your choice of adjuvant endocrine therapy for a premenopausal woman with high clinical risk HR+ early stage disease?
From TEXT and SOFT trials, patients who did not receive adjuvant chemotherapy did well and had similar outcome across treatment arms, with tamoxifen performing as well as the arms with ovarian suppression. This is an interesting observation that reflects lower risk disease, that does not need chemot...
Would you offer neoadjuvant immunotherapy in addition to chemotherapy for locally advanced HR+ breast cancer based on the I-SPY 2 data?
The I-SPY 2 trial did show an impressive improvement in pathological complete response rate in triple negative (60% vs 20%) and HR+/Her-2- breast cancer (34% vs 13%) with the addition of pembrolizumab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, but we still don’t have long term data, such as disease free survival ...
How do you approach use of tamoxifen in premenopausal patients who developed ovarian cysts while on therapy?
Tamoxifen is a potent inducer of ovarian function, which can lead to ovarian cysts and hyperestrogenism in premenopausal women. Although ovarian cysts may cause complications and be revealed as malignancy, the majority of tamoxifen induced ovarian cysts are benign and can be observed without surgica...