At the virtual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, researchers presented an update of the PHOEBE trial, which showed that the addition of novel drug pyrotinib to capecitabine offered an overall survival (OS) advantage over lapatinib (Tukysa) in patients with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer treated with trastuzumab and taxanes.
In this exclusive 鶹ý video, , of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, offers her takeaways on the updated analysis.
Following is a transcript of her remarks:
Good morning, this is Dr. Amy Tiersten from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. There were a lot of exciting breast cancer abstracts presented at the San Antonio meeting this month.
One of the studies that I found most interesting is the. This is a phase III trial which demonstrated that pretreated metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer patients had an improved overall survival when treated with the new agent pyrotinib plus capecitabine as compared to lapatinib plus capecitabine.
It's quite unusual to actually see a survival difference in trials of heavily pretreated metastatic breast cancer. Unlike lapatinib, which is a reversible inhibitor of HER2 signaling, which may encourage resistance, pyrotinib is an irreversible inhibitor. Patients on the pyrotinib arm had a very impressive 30% decrease in the risk of death, as compared to patients on the lapatinib arm. Importantly, this improvement was not at the cost of additional toxicities.
Better therapies are needed for our metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer patients, and this new combination represents a very attractive later-line option for treatment.
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