This year’s Congress offered results on a promising treatment for metastatic breast cancer, as well as an update on Verzenio’s benefits for early-stage disease and other breast cancer research.
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The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2023 in Madrid, Spain, included nearly 30,000 participants involved in all aspects of cancer research, advocacy, and care.
The five-day meeting featured a number of presentations on breast cancer treatments and care, including one on a promising new medicine for metastatic hormone receptor-positive breast cancer and another on how short-term fasting before and after chemotherapy can help prevent fatigue.
Here are five important breast cancer takeaways from the conference.
An experimental targeted therapy medicine called Dato-DXd helped people diagnosed with metastatic, hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer live longer without the cancer growing.
The TROPION-Breast01 trial focused on Dato-DXd, a type of medicine called an antibody-drug conjugate.
The trial found that it offered longer progression-free survival than standard chemotherapy for inoperable or metastatic hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer that had grown while being treated with hormonal therapy.
The results suggest that Dato-DXd may join Enhertu and Trodelvy as antibody-drug conjugates used to treat breast cancer.
Short-term fasting during chemotherapy prevents fatigue and improves the quality of life.
Taking in only about 200 daily calories for two days before and one day after chemotherapy improved the quality of life and helped prevent fatigue in women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer.
Verzenio continues to reduce the risk of early-stage breast cancer coming back (recurrence) long after people stop taking it.
Results from the monarchE trial after five years of follow-up showed that, compared to people who took only hormonal therapy, people who took Verzenio and hormonal therapy were less likely to have a breast cancer recurrence.
They were also less likely to have a distant, or metastatic, recurrence, which means the cancer comes back in a part of the body away from the breast.
Several studies have found that having a child after breast cancer treatment is safe for both the mother and the child.
Still, women do need to take into account their personal risk of breast cancer recurrence, the characteristics of the breast cancer, and the medicines they’ve received when making decisions about pregnancy after breast cancer.
