Breast cancer research focuses on early detection, targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and personalized treatment approaches.
NRG-BR002 was a randomized phase II/III trial of 129 patients with oligometastatic breast cancer (125 eligible; 65 vs 60) comparing first-line systemic therapy alone with the same therapy plus ablation of all metastases by SBRT or surgery. At the phase II analysis (72 PFS events), median PFS was 23.0 months without ablation versus 19.5 months with ablation (HR 0.92; 95% CI, 0.57–1.47; 1-sided P = .36; stratified P = .42).
EXTEND was an investigator-initiated, multicenter, open-label, six-basket phase II randomized trial of metastasis-directed therapy (MDT) added to standard of care (SOC) in oligometastatic solid tumors. In the aggregated per-protocol population (n = 334; 166 vs 168), progression-free survival favored MDT + SOC: HR 0.54 (95% CI 0.41 to 0.72), P < .001, with median PFS 25.40 vs 14.00 months at a median follow-up of 53 months.
In a retrospective, multicenter study of 133 women with HER2-positive stage I-III breast cancer treated at four hospitals in Istanbul between 2010 and 2024, concurrent adjuvant radiotherapy with T-DM1 (n = 50) was associated with higher rates of any-grade thrombocytopenia (70% vs 36.1%; P < .001), ALT elevation (20% vs 4.8%; P = .008), AST elevation (24.5% vs 2.4%; P < .001) and early pulmonary toxicity (48.8% vs 24.1%; P = .017) than concurrent radiotherapy with trastuzumab (n = 83).
A-BRAVE randomized 466 patients with high-risk early triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) to 52 weeks of adjuvant avelumab or observation. The co-primary endpoints were not met (ITT DFS: HR 0.81; 95% CI 0.61–1.09; P = 0.172). This report is a prespecified analysis of the prognostic and predictive role of stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and residual cancer burden (RCB).
PATHFINDER 2, a prospective, interventional cohort study of 35,878 adults aged 50 and older with no clinical suspicion of cancer, evaluated the performance and safety of a blood-based multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test that analyzes cell-free DNA methylation patterns to detect a shared cancer signal and predict its tissue of origin.
Final, 15-to-17-year follow-up of the companion phase III SOFT and TEXT trials, conducted at 510 sites in 27 countries, reports that adding ovarian function suppression (OFS) to adjuvant endocrine therapy — and pairing OFS with the aromatase inhibitor exemestane rather than tamoxifen — reduced disease recurrence in premenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive early breast cancer, the longest follow-up yet published for this population.
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 trial (NSABP B-59/GBG 96-GeparDouze) tested whether adding the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, followed by adjuvant atezolizumab, would improve outcomes over chemotherapy alone in 1,550 patients with stage II–III triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
A phase 3 registrational randomized trial (Neo-Healer, BCTOP study group) across 61 Chinese hospitals compared neoadjuvant anbenitamab plus HB1801 — with or without carboplatin — against standard trastuzumab, pertuzumab, and docetaxel (THP) in 521 patients with stage II or III ERBB2-positive breast cancer.
A prespecified biomarker analysis of the phase 3 RxPONDER (SWOG S1007) trial finds that serum anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), a marker of ovarian reserve, identifies which women under 55 with hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative, node-positive breast cancer actually benefit from adding chemotherapy to endocrine therapy — outperforming menopausal status and age as a predictor.
Updated results from the prospective, single-arm POSITIVE trial — now with a median follow-up of 71 months, up from 41 months at the original analysis — found no increase in breast cancer recurrence risk among young women with hormone receptor-positive disease who paused adjuvant endocrine therapy to attempt pregnancy.
A registry-based analysis of 11,681 US interventional cancer trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov between 2008 and 2024 found that industry sponsors now outnumber federal sponsors nearly 5 to 1 (4.53-to-1 overall), with the ratio widening from 2.72-to-1 in 2008–2012 to 6.44-to-1 in 2019–2024.
In a prognostic analysis nested within the phase 2 c-TRAK TN trial, a tissue-free ctDNA assay detected molecular residual disease in 54 of 159 patients (34.0%) with early triple negative breast cancer, and detection was strongly associated with recurrence risk (HR, 27.2).
The multicenter PRO B trial randomized 924 patients with metastatic breast cancer across 52 German centers to weekly alert-based electronic patient-reported outcome (ePRO) monitoring or usual quarterly PRO monitoring, with fatigue at 6 months as the primary endpoint.
A Phase 2 arm of the adaptive I-SPY2 platform trial (78 patients treated 2020-2021, compared against 350 historical controls) tested adding cemiplimab (anti-PD-1) and fianlimab (anti-LAG-3) to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in high-risk, stage II-III, ERBB2 (HER2)-negative breast cancer.
A systematic review and trial-level meta-analysis of 21 randomized trials (9,165 pooled patients) in HR+/HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer compares investigator (local site)-assessed progression-free survival against blinded independent central review (BICR), asking whether the added cost and complexity of BICR is actually needed.
VIKTORIA-1 is a Phase 3, open-label, randomized, global trial enrolling 392 PIK3CA wild-type patients with HR+/HER2- metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer who had progressed on prior CDK4/6 inhibitor plus nonsteroidal aromatase inhibitor therapy