Dr Tolaney talks to ecancer about results she presented at ASCO 2025 from an international phase 3 clinical trial that showed that treatment with sacituzumab govitecan and pembrolizumab helps patients with unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic PD-L1-positive triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) live longer without cancer progression compared to chemotherapy and pembrolizumab.

The ASCENT-04 study enrolled 443 patients from 26 countries. The demographics of the participants were balanced between the two treatment arms and consistent with the characteristics of people diagnosed with metastatic TNBC. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either sacituzumab govitecan and pembrolizumab (221 patients) or chemotherapy and pembrolizumab (222 patients).