Comment: Metastatic triple-negative breast cancer responds to immunotherapy

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Published: 1 May 2015
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Dr Louis Weiner - Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Washington D.C, USA

Dr Louis Weiner comments on Prof Leisha Emen's research for ecancertv at AACR 2015. He covers how patients with triple-negative breast cancer have a worse prognosis than patients with other breast cancer subtypes, and in the United States, there is currently no targeted treatment available.

He also discusses high hopes for future treatments with an investigational targeted immunotherapy under development directed at metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Read the news story or watch the press conference or  interview with Prof Emens for more.

I think this is a very, very important observation.

Triple negative breast cancer has long frustrated patients and their doctors because there’s no hook to attack; there’s no target that we can go after.

Women with triple negative breast cancer, especially when it’s metastatic have been forced to rely upon standard chemotherapy agents that don’t work well.

This treatment using just one non-cytotoxic agent, a PDL1 targeting antibody, is causing major anti-cancer responses in 20-25% of patients.

And, in fact, there are other anti-PD1 antibody therapies that have similar responses.

So this is a valuable target to go after and the responses are durable.

So do you think this is just the beginning, then? The first targeted therapy in triple negative breast cancer but there could be more?

I believe this is the first example of effective targeted therapies for breast cancer targeting the PD1/PDL1 axis.

I am confident that with continued investigations and additional therapeutic manipulations that we’re going to help other people, more people, with breast cancer that’s triple negative and I believe that we’re going to end up with improved therapies.