Paolo Tarantino, 2025 Yvonne’s “Top Voice” Award Winner, Clinical Research Fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Visiting Professor at McGill University, shared some key insights from this year’s San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS):
“Kicking off SABCS25 in full swing, literally! Fantastic tennis tournament under the Texas sun. Thanks to Virginia for organizing… and for reminding me I really need some practice before SABCS26!
“Don’t miss our SABCS25 Symposium on ADCs moving to earlier lines on Thursday night! Chaired by Joyce O’Shaughnessy and featuring Javier Cortes, Sybille Loibl, and myself.”
“Among patients with TNBC, not all residual disease post-NACT is created equal. In a large German pooled analysis of biomarkers centrally evaluated on RD, lower Ki67 and higher TILs led to much better long-term outcomes.”
“Phase 3 trials of (neo)adjuvant carboplatin without IO in TNBC – by Priyanka Sharma.”
“Among patients with ER+/HER2+ MBC, maintenance HP (control arm) had a PFS of:
- 29.1 mo in PATINA
- 16.3 mo in HER2CLIMB-05
The difference? In PATINA, all patients also received ET (only 45% in H2C-05).
Reminder that, besides fancy new drugs, ET can REALLY make a difference in this disease!”
“TILs: not only relevant for TNBC.
In CompassHER2-pCR, pts with higher TILs (>10%) experienced higher pCR rates with THPx4 (significant in ER+/HER2+ subgroup)
My take: it’s time to consider routinely scoring TILs & include them in the estimation of prognosis for this population.”
” ‘It is impossible to adequately estimate prognosis in HER2+ breast cancer without evaluating the immune micro-environment.’ – Roberto Salgado
Agree.”
“Interesting sub-analysis from PherGAIN: early clearance of ctDNA at C3D1 predicted higher pCR and better outcomes for HER2+ eBC. Baseline ctDNA status also predictive of outcomes. Not ready for prime time, but extremely promising and warranting of further validation.”
“The good news: multimodal molecular profiling +/- AI image analyses could improve the prediction of which patients will experience a distant recurrence.
The bad news: the complexity of the prediction will increasingly challenge our understanding of <why> a tumor is considered high risk.”
“ASCENT-07 presented by Komal Jhaveri: in ET-refractory ER+/HER2- MBC, in a mostly visceral met population, first-line SG did not improve PFS vs. chemo. Best PFS observed with capecitabine, which, along with T-DXd, remains the preferred option to consider in this population.”
“DATO-Base: 30% intracranial response rate with Dato-DXd among patients with LMD. Median OS exceeding 1 year among patients without prior ADC receipt. Join us at the SABCS25 poster today to review the results in depth!”
“lidERA: among patients with ER+/HER2- eBC and N+ or high biologic risk, adjuvant giredestrant significantly improved iDFS vs SoC ET (HR 0.70). Comparable tox to AI, slightly higher rate of bradicardia (10%). Trials ongoing to understand role in combination with adjuvant CDK4/6i.”
“lidERA results in the context of modern adjuvant trials — by Lisa Carey.”
“Do patients with LMD benefit from Dato-DXd?
The DATOBASE phase 2 trial found 30% icORR, with OS 4.7 mo — but OS up to 13.3 mo in ADC-naive patients. Improvement in neurological symptoms in most patients. Two cohorts keep enrolling.
Lucky to be working on this with Sarah Sammons.”
“Positive results from the EPIK-B5 randomized trial: adding alpelisib to fulvestrant improved PFS in a CDK4/6i pretreated population, reassuring on the validity of prior non-randomized data (BYLieve). Hyperglycemia remains an issue with the drug. Congrats, Michelino De Laurentiis.”
“Numerical – though not significant – improvement in PFS2 with camizestrant in SERENA-6. ctDNA ESR1m allele fraction profoundly reduced with camizestrant vs AI. OS still immature (22% maturity).”
“Benefit of gedatolisib in the VIKTORIA-1 trial was seen irrespective of duration of the immediate prior therapy.”
“Interesting ctDNA sub-analysis from CAPItello291. Most PIK3CA/AKT/PTEN alterations are found both on tissue and ctDNA, but about 10% are found only on one of the two methods. PTEN alterations the most discordant.”
“AMBRE trial: Does 1L chemo (+/- ET/abema maintenance) improve outcomes for patients with high-burden HR+/HER2- MBC? No — better PFS, ORR and DoR with upfront ET+abemaciclib. With multiple trials reporting on this question, we now have a quite definitive response.”
“7-year outcomes from PALLAS. No benefit from adjuvant palbociclib — with a higher number of visceral recurrences and shorter post-recurrence OS among the patients treated with palbociclib. Need to produce this important data from monarche and NATALEE.”
“Terrific ADC symposium with an all-star faculty. Few treatment modalities have impacted outcomes in oncology as much as ADCs. Looking forward to seeing more cures with ADCs moving in earlier lines of treatment!”
You can find more posts featuring Paolo Tarantino on OncoDaily.