Researcher says to find a mentor who brings you into ‘the room’ where ideas flow
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Editor's Note: This is part one of a three-part Healio Exclusive series on Women to Watch.
Sarah L. Sammons, MD, was 7 when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Years later during high school, the mothers of two of her closest friends passed away from metastatic breast cancer.
“I was driven to breast cancer research at a very young age,” Sammons, medical oncologist and researcher in the Breast Oncology Center, and associate director of the Metastatic Breast Cancer Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, told Healio.
“I began my research in breast cancer in high school and went on to medical school, where I kept an open mind to ensure that it was the right career move,” she said. “I found that nothing else drove me internally as much as a career in oncology. Working to improve outcomes for women facing breast cancer is something I’ve always been passionate about.”
Research efforts
Sammons has focused much of her research on improving outcomes for patients with high-risk disease, with a specific interest in those with metastatic breast cancer and brain metastases.
“I’ve been involved in several clinical trials that focused on finding new drug-based therapies for patients with metastatic breast cancer to improve their outcomes as well as finding therapies and strategies that minimize side effects and toxicities of treatment, which can be very challenging and harsh for patients,” she said.
The phase 2 DORA trial sprung from her passion to improve outcomes for this patient population.
“DORA aimed to examine a chemotherapy-free maintenance strategy of immunotherapy plus a [poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP)] inhibitor among patients with advanced triple-negative breast cancer who had responded to platinum-based induction therapy,” Sammons said. “We identified a subset of patients who did benefit from this strategy and experienced disease control for about 6 months — free of chemotherapy.”
The trial included 45 patients randomly assigned to maintenance olaparib (Lynparza, AstraZeneca) with (n = 23) or without (n = 22) durvalumab (Imfinzi, AstraZeneca).
At median follow-up of 9.8 months, results showed median PFS of 3.95 months (95% CI, 2.55-6.13) with olaparib alone compared with 6.1 months (95% CI, 3.68-10.11) with olaparib plus durvalumab.
“We also found that patients with BRCA methylation in their tumors were more likely to respond to this strategy which can be used for future research,” Sammons said.
At the time of data cutoff of June 30, 2021, seven patients remained on study treatment with no new safety signals reported.
In other research, Sammons and a medical student at Duke University found that more than two-thirds of patients with new HER2-positive brain metastases experienced stable or no extracranial disease.
“We found in this analysis that patients with isolated brain metastases had worse overall survival than those presenting with brain metastases later on in their disease course,” Sammons said. “Based on these results, we want to assess the introduction of the HER2-penetrable tyrosine kinase inhibitor [TKI] tucatinib [Tukysa, Seagen] immediately after radiation therapy, because when added to other therapies, tucatinib has been shown to improve PFS and OS in patients with brain metastasis,” Sammons said. “It made rational sense to us that this drug should be introduced as soon as possible to improve outcomes.”
Sammons has also been instrumental in helping the field better understand the efficacy of antibody drug conjugates in the treatment of brain metastases and leptomeningeal disease.
“We were the first to report the activity of T-DXd in HER2-positive leptomeningeal disease, which is a very difficult to treat diagnosis,” she said.
Another trial underway involves the novel TROP2-directed antibody-drug conjugate datopotamab deruxtecan (AstraZeneca/Daiichi Sankyo) in patients with triple-negative brain metastasis, ER-positive and HER2-negative brain metastasis, or leptomeningeal disease.
“That trial just started enrolling and I’m really excited about the prospect of new effective options for our patients,” Sammons said.
‘Find your niche’
Although her career in academic oncology has been notably rewarding, Sammons’ success has not come without struggle.
“As a mother of two young children, my career has allowed me to be flexible and suits me quite well — but it can be hard to find your place and niche in academic oncology,” Sammons said.
Her advice to fellows and early-career investigators is to keep an open mind and find a mentor who will include you in research projects and allow you to “be in the room.”
“Success comes from your mentor bringing you to the table where the research is being discussed and where you can learn and develop ideas,” Sammons said.
She highlighted the importance of being somewhat of a “yes person” during early-career years as a resident, fellow or early-career investigator in order to form relationships and understand processes of research, but then dialing that back as time goes on to focus on your true passions.
“What I’m working on now as I transition from early-career to mid-stage investigator is narrowing my interest and focus to what drives me and what I’m passionate about, which sometimes means saying no to some of the things that I’m not so passionate about,” she said. “It is so important to stick to your convictions and find something that motivates you. Figure out what makes you angry in the clinic, or what makes you frustrated, or what you wish we did better daily — believe me, there are many things that we could and should be doing better — and work on that. If you keep doing that, and you have the right mentorship and the right infrastructure to conduct the research, then you will be successful.”
References:
- Alder L, et al. NPJ Breast Cancer. 2023;doi:10.1038/s41523-023-00519-0.
- Noteware L, et al. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2023;doi:10.1007/s10549-022-06799-7.
- Sammons SL, et al. Cancer Res. 2023;doi:10.1158/1538-7445.SABCS22-PD11-12.
For more information:
Sarah L. Sammons, MD, can be reached at sarahl_sammons@dfci.harvard.edu.
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