VIDEO: Research in early breast cancer focusing on targeted therapy, de-escalation

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[E. McAuley Fish, DO] A lot of research is focusing on these earlier stages and is and should be focusing on really targeting our treatment, so, you know, targeting the gene mutations that a tumor has. There's specific biomarkers and there's two trials. The Match trial and the Terpsichore trial that are, you know, taking a sample of a patient's tumor, really doing genetic sequencing of, you know, all the mutations or any mutation that it has. And then targeting with a drug, you know, to that specific mutation, not just, you know, our blanket chemotherapies and things like that.

So, I think that's really important to target that. And then another thing that Dr. Lyons alluded to is really de-escalation of treatment in certain things. So, DCIS or ductal carcinoma in situ, is our earliest stage breast cancer. So that's, you know, the tumors have not been able to invade outside of the duct yet. And we're really looking at, through multiple trials, you know, here and elsewhere, the Comma trial, the Loras trial, Loretta, Lore trial. We're over looking at potentially just monitoring and using endocrine therapy, so the pill, you know, for 5 to 10 years versus doing our current standard of care, which, you know, does involve an operation and then adjuvant radiation and endocrine therapy.

So, you know, the results of those trials are not out yet, but we could see some de-escalation in this earliest form of breast cancer and may not even involve us, may not even involve surgery.