Massimo Cristofanilli

• MD, FACP
• Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine

Purpose of review In the evolving landscape of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive breast cancer (BC) management, liquid biopsy offers unprecedented opportunities for guiding clinical decisions. Here, we review the most recent findings on liquid biopsy applications in HER2-positive BC and its potential role in addressing challe...

1039 Background: ER positive/HER2 negative metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is typically regarded as a single entity, although significant clinical differences are often observed, especially in the ER low subgroup (ER<10% regardless of PR status). This study aims to investigate genomic differences among HER2 negative subtypes (i.e., ERlow, PRpos [ER...

549 Background: Tumor-informed ctDNA-based detection of minimal residual disease (MRD) in the adjuvant setting for patients (pts) with early breast cancer (EBC) is strongly associated with recurrence. However, the clinical impact of early ctDNA detection and potential therapeutic intervention remains unclear. In this multi-institution retrospective...

TPS1143 Background: PARP inhibitors are approved for germline BRCA1/2mutant MBC but the applicability of these well-tolerated oral targeted therapies is limited, as germline BRCA1/2mutations account for 5% of breast cancer. We demonstrated that pathogenic somatic BRCA1/2mutations are detectable in cell-free DNA and tumor tissue genotyping assays in...

e12566 Background: This retrospective analysis explores the concordance between molecular analyses of tissue and plasma amongst Advanced Breast Cancer (ABC) patients and investigates the utility of simultaneous profiling for enhanced clinical insights. Methods: A total of 187 (177 Cancertrack paired and 10 Guardant 360) patient samples with availab...

TPS1127 Background: Patients with estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) metastatic breast cancer (mBC) may develop resistance to endocrine therapy (ET), particularly following treatment with a cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i), potentially driven by a mutation in the ERa-coding gene, ESR1. Lasofoxifene (LAS), an oral, next-generation ET an...

1017 Background: Despite well-documented disparities in survival between patients (pts) with Black and White racial backgrounds, there are limited data on racial equity of targeted treatment use for pts with estrogen receptor positive, HER2 negative (ER+/HER2-) metastatic breast cancer (MBC). We evaluated differences in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA...

Background: Patients with estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) metastatic breast cancer (BC) may develop resistance to endocrine therapy (ET), particularly following treatment with a cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i), potentially driven by a mutation in the ERa-coding gene, ESR1. Lasofoxifene, an oral, next-generation ET and ER breast ant...

Background: PARP inhibitors improve both progression free survival (PFS) and patient quality of life in germline BRCA1/2 mutant metastatic breast cancer (MBC), which accounts for 5-10% of breast cancer, leading to their approval in this setting. We have previously shown that a subset of patients with MBC who are not germline BRCA1/2 carriers may ha...

Background: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) offer new treatment possibilities for women with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) – one of the most challenging breast cancer subtypes. The PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (pembro; Keytruda®) is approved in metastatic TNBC (mTNBC) patients with PD-L1(+) tumors, and for neoadjuvant treatment (NAT) in...

Background: The Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population exhibits a distinctive mutation profile in BRCA1 and BRCA2 (BRCA1/2), characterized by 3 common founder mutations: BRCA1 185delAG, BRCA1 5382insC, and BRCA2 6174delT. These 3 mutations are associated with 10% of invasive breast cancer (BC) cases among AJ women. However, the frequency of non-founder p...

Background: Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is an aggressive clinical presentation of breast cancer (BC). Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) combined with chemotherapy provided an overall survival (OS) benefit in the metastatic setting and an even-free survival (EFS) benefit in patients (pts) with early triple-negative (TN) BC, respectively. Pati...

Background: Black breast cancer patients have a well-documented survival disparity when compared to White patients. It is imperative to explore the reasons for this disparity from both a socioeconomic and biological perspective. Prior studies evaluating somatic genetic differences have primarily focused on tumor tissue analysis, which could be limi...

Background: Several prospective, randomized clinical trials showed that the CDK4/6 inhibitor palbociclib in combination with either letrozole or fulvestrant significantly improves progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with ER+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer (MBC). However, in some cases, there is development of endocrine resistance and ultima...

Patients who receive frontline CDK4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) therapy eventually experience disease progression. Resistance to CDK4/6i is likely a transient adaptive mechanism that may be reversed by inhibition of the PI3K/mTOR pathway. Thus, combination of CDK4/6i and PI3K/mTORi after disease progression on CDK4/6i could restore sensitivity to CDK4/6i...

Background The PACE trial for HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer (MBC) prospectively evaluated whether continuation of the CKD4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) palbociclib (P) beyond progression on prior CDK4/6i and aromatase inhibitor (AI), with a change in endocrine therapy (ET) to fulvestrant (F), improved outcomes beyond change to F alone, as well as exp...

Background: While CDK4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) plus endocrine therapy (ET) is standard-of-care first-line (1L) therapy for hormone-positive (HR+), HER2-negative mBC, there is ongoing debate regarding optimal use of the three FDA-approved CDK4/6i drugs. All three drugs have demonstrated significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS), but only...

Background: Limited data are available to determine the best therapeutic strategy for hormone-receptor positive (HR+) HER2 negative (HER2-) advanced breast cancer (ABC) after progression on cyclin dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i). The aim of this study was to characterize the genomic and prognostic profile of patients (pts) that experience...

Background: Despite how commonly synonymous mutations (SYN) and unknown significance (VUS) are detected in tissue and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) next-generation sequencing (NGS), the potential for these somatic changes to impact personalized approaches in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is unclear. Emerging evidence suggests that SYN mutations ma...

Background: Pre-clinical and clinical data suggest that CDK4/6 inhibitors can promote an immunogenic tumor microenvironment (TME) and when combined with programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitors synergistic anti-cancer effects are observed. To understand the differential effects of CDK4/6 inhibition in the context of immunotherapy we design...

Introduction: Estrogen receptor-positive (ER+)/HER2-negative (HER2-) breast cancers commonly acquire constitutively active mutations in the ERα-encoding gene (ESR1), resulting in endocrine therapy (ET) resistance. In the phase 2, ELAINE 2 study (NCT04432454), LAS (a breast ER antagonist) combined with Abema provided a median progression-free surviv...

Background: Liquid biopsy provides a real-time assessment of metastatic breast cancer (MBC). Recently, the complementary prognostic value of tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (tdEVs) and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has been reported. We have previously confirmed the strong prognostic significance of CTCs and tdEVs in inflammatory breast cance...

Background: MBC is usually classified based on ER and HER2 status. Although the absence of PR expression is commonly associated with a poorer response to endocrine therapy (ET) and an unfavorable prognosis, data regarding the underlining molecular features that occur in this subgroup are still unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate genom...

Background: PARP inhibitors (PARPi) are a standard of care for breast cancer (BC) patients (pts) with germline BRCA (gBRCA) mutation, with benefit demonstrated also in patients with somatic (s) BRCA1/2 mutations. The use of circulating tumor (ct) DNA testing allows to detect resistant and actionable alterations in BC, but it could be associated wit...

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare and aggressive clinical entity among breast cancer (BC), having a particular geographic repartition. The clinical diagnosis is based on established criteria that require the presence of rapidly developing inflammatory changes affecting at least 1/3 of the mammary gland. This strict definition may exclude d...

Liquid biopsy has emerged as a crucial tool in managing breast cancer (BC) patients, offering a minimally invasive approach to detect circulating tumor biomarkers. Until recently, the majority of the studies in BC focused on evaluating a single liquid biopsy analyte, primarily circulating tumor DNA and circulating tumor cells (CTCs). Despite the pr...

Despite widespread utilization of immunotherapy, challenge to treat immune-cold tumors needs to be resolved. Multiomic analyses and experimental validation identified the OTUD4-CD73 proteolytic axis as a promising target in treating immune-suppressive triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Mechanistically, deubiquitylation of CD73 by OTUD4 counterac...

Background: Invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) has distinctive clinical and molecular features compared with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). CTCs and tdEVs are independent prognostic factors in MBC, however, liquid biopsy studies focusing on ILC are to date scarce. Higher CTC levels have been observed in ILC than IDC. One study including 28 ILC pts...

Background: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are considered a key element in metastatic progression and represent a validated prognostic biomarker in breast cancer (BC). CTCs in BC are normally defined as epithelial cells (positive for EPCAM or cytokeratin, CK) lacking the expression of the leukocyte marker CD45. Circulating cells expressing both EPC...

Background Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are associated with worse survival in metastatic breast cancer (MBC). The PACE study (NCT03147287) enrolled patients (pts) with hormone receptor-positive (HR+)/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) MBC after progression on CDK4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) and endocrine therapy, and randomized...

Background: ESR1 mutations (ESR1m) are acquired resistance mutations that evolve during treatment with aromatase inhibitor (AI) therapy in approximately 40% of ER+ HER2- metastatic breast cancer (mBC) patients and are indicative of poor outcomes. Patients with ESR1m acquired on AI may retain treatment response if switched to selective estrogen rece...

Background: KAT6A is a histone acetyltransferase that regulates gene transcription, cell cycle, senescence and cell differentiation. It is amplified and overexpressed in a subset of breast cancers and may positively regulate ER expression. Gene expression analysis in tumor samples from the PALOMA-3 study was conducted to explore potential associati...

Background: The use of circulating tumor (ct) DNA testing allows to detect resistant and actionable somatic alterations and it could be associated with the incidental identification of germline mutations. An univocal variant allele frequency (VAF) threshold to distinguish germinal form somatic mutations has not been assessed yet. We aimed to correl...

Background: Circulating tumor cell clusters (CTCCs) are aggregated groups of tumor cells that detached from primary tumors and circulate the bloodstream. However, while Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) are a well studied phenomenon, CTCCs remain relatively unexplored and ill-defined, with only a few descriptive investigations evaluating their clinica...

PURPOSE Cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6is) are an important component of treatment for hormone receptor–positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2–negative (HER2–) metastatic breast cancer (MBC), but it is not known if patients might derive benefit from continuation of CDK4/6i with endocrine therapy beyond initial tumor...

Objective In this prospective study, we aim to characterize the prognostic value of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) by next-generation-sequencing (NGS) in patients undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Summary Background Data Circulating tumor DNA is a promising blood-based biomarker that is prognosti...

Importance Tissue-based next-generation sequencing (NGS) of solid tumors is the criterion standard for identifying somatic mutations that can be treated with National Comprehensive Cancer Network guideline–recommended targeted therapies. Sequencing of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) can also identify tumor-derived mutations, and there is increasing c...

Background The MONARCH 2 trial (NCT02107703) showed the efficacy of abemaciclib, a cyclin-dependent kinase 4 & 6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i), in combination with fulvestrant for hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer (MBC). The aim of this analysis was to explore the prediction of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) stratification usi...

Background although being central for the biology and druggability of hormone-receptor positive, HER2 negative metastatic breast cancer (MBC), ESR1 and PIK3CA mutations are simplistically dichotomized as mutated or wild type in current clinical practice. Methods The study analyzed a multi-institutional cohort comprising 703 patients with luminal-l...

Background: Baseline tumor size (BTS) has been associated with outcomes in patients with cancer treated with immunotherapy. However, the prognostic impact of BTS on patients receiving targeted therapies (TTs) remains undetermined. Methods: We reviewed data of patients with advanced solid tumors consecutively treated within early-phase clinical t...

Precision medicine aims to improve healthcare by identifying subsets of patients that are more likely to benefit from specific treatment strategies. Liquid biopsy offers the unique potential to better understand and monitor disease biology, since it is not burdened by the temporal and spatial limitations of tissue biopsy. CTC (circulating tumor cel...

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is the most aggressive and fatal clinical presentation of breast cancer. Despite the term "inflammatory", based on the clinical presentation, IBC is biologically driven by an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). Whether IBC can be switched into an immune-inflamed TME by immune-checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs)...

Most circulating tumor cells (CTC) are detected as single cells, whereas a small proportion of CTCs in multicellular clusters with stemness properties possess 20- to 100-times higher metastatic propensity than the single cells. Here we report that CTC dynamics in both singles and clusters in response to therapies predict overall survival for breast...

Introduction: About 50% of breast cancers are defined as HER2-low and may benefit from HER2-directed antibody-drug conjugates (ADC). While tissue sequencing has evaluated potential differences in genomic profiles for patients with HER2-low breast cancer, genetic alterations in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) have not been well described. Materials...

e13099 Background: TP53 is one of the most frequently mutated genes in metastatic breast cancer (MBC); however, its prognostic role remains undetermined. Plasma-based genotyping via cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is a noninvasive means of assessing the genomic landscape of MBC, accounting for heterogeneity between tumors. This study evaluated the associatio...

TPS1134 Background: While PARP inhibitors are approved for germline BRCA1/2 mutant MBC, and are shown to improve both patient quality of life and progression-free survival (PFS), as a well-tolerated oral targeted therapy, their utility is limited as germline BRCA1/2 mutations are present in 5-10% of breast cancer. We hypothesize that somatic BRCA1/...

3054 Background: Tumor Macrophage Fusion Cells (TMFCs) are hybrids fusions of tumor cells and macrophage/immune cells that have recently been documented in advanced solid tumors, such as metastatic Breast Cancer (mBC). Further, TMFCs are found in the blood of patients (pts) as a CD45+/CD14+ binucleated subtype of standard circulating tumor cells (C...

TPS1118 Background: Patients who receive frontline CDK4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) therapy eventually experience disease progression. Resistance to CDK4/6i is likely a transient adaptive mechanism that may be reversed by inhibition of the PI3K/mTOR pathway. Thus, combination of CDK4/6i and PI3K/mTORi after disease progression on CDK4/6i could restore se...

e12523 Background: Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare, aggressive form of breast cancer and despite a multimodal treatment approach, it is associated with early recurrence and poor prognosis. There is a need for sensitive and reliable biomarkers for therapy response monitoring and early prediction of disease progression. The prognostic and...

1074 Background: Mutations in estrogen receptor 1 ( ESR1) confer resistance to aromatase inhibitors but may retain sensitivity to selective estrogen receptor degraders (SERD). Recently, elacestrant, an oral SERD, was approved for patients with HR+/HER2- ESR1 mut metastatic breast cancer (MBC). In this study, we evaluated the genomic landscape of ES...

575 Background: Two thirds of breast carcinomas are human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) low. To date, it is still unclear whether hormone receptor (HR) positive HER2 low tumors represent a distinct biological subtype. HER2 low status is not considered an independent predictive factor for benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy in HR positive...

e13080 Background: Breast cancer is a genetically and clinically heterogeneous entity, with high prevalence in the Indian population. The primary objective of this study was to characterize the somatic mutational landscape of metastatic breast cancer in Indian patients from tumor and liquid specimens. Methods: We performed molecular profiling of 34...

1059 Background: PACE is a multicenter randomized phase II trial investigating palbociclib (P) in combination with fulvestrant (F) after progression on any CDK4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i), with or without the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab (A), in HR+/HER2- MBC. CTCs are rare cells in the blood stream whose detection is associated with worse outcome and treat...

e14548 Background: Micronuclei (MN) are small, excised DNA fragments resulting from biological DNA repair mechanisms in response to internal chromosomal instability, such as those caused by genotoxic events (i.e. chemotherapy and radiation), and whose formation in tumor stromal cells in blood circulation is prognostic for worse clinical outcomes (F...

1098 Background: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are an independent prognostic factor in metastatic breast cancer (MBC). The prognostic value of CTCs and the optimal cutoff for patients (pts) with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), one of the most aggressive types of BC, has not been fully established. Recent evidence showed the complementary prognos...

1038 Background: The monitoring of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumor cell (CTC) in patients with MBC predicts treatment resistance and prognosis. We previously reported that ESR1 alterations in ctDNA were associated with tumor tissue characteristics and CTCs which may predict metastasis and worse prognosis in MBC (2019 ASCO#1036,...

Accumulating evidence demonstrates that circulating tumor cell (CTC) clusters have higher metastatic ability than single CTCs and negatively correlate with cancer patient outcomes. Along with homotypic CTC clusters, heterotypic CTC clusters (such as neutrophil–CTC clusters), which have been identified in both cancer mouse models and cancer patients...

Purpose: As the continuation beyond progression (BP) of cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i) is becoming increasingly attractive for the treatment of patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative metastatic breast cancer (MBC), the definition of resistance factors is crucial. The...

ESR1 mutation (ESR1m) is a frequent cause of acquired resistance to aromatase inhibitor (AI) plus cyclin-dependent kinase 4 and 6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i), which is a first-line therapy for hormone-receptor-positive (HR+)/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) advanced breast cancer (ABC). Camizestrant is a next-generation oral selec...

Patients who receive frontline CDK4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) therapy eventually experience disease progression. Resistance to CDK4/6i is likely a transient adaptive mechanism that may be reversed by inhibition of the PI3K/mTOR pathway. Thus, combination of CDK4/6i and PI3K/mTORi after disease progression on CDK4/6i could restore sensitivity to CDK4/6i...

Metastasis is the cause of over 90% of all deaths associated with breast cancer, yet the strategies to predict cancer spreading based on primary tumor profiles and therefore prevent metastasis are egregiously limited. As rare precursor cells to metastasis, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in multicellular clusters in the blood are 20-50 times more li...

Background Alterations in the MAPK pathway are known mechanisms for tumorigenesis in multiple solid tumors. While not major drivers in early breast cancers, activating MAPK pathway alterations have been invoked as potential resistance mechanisms in advanced hormone receptor positive (HR+) breast cancer. While MAPK pathway mutations are believed to...

Background: Micronuclei (MN) are a result of biological DNA repair mechanisms which form due to internal chromosomal aberrations indicating sub-clonal cancer populations with higher cell survivability and drug therapy resistance. MN are often observed as small fragments of nucleic acids excised from a primary nucleus in Circulating Stomal Cells (CS...

Introduction: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are associated with prognosis in breast cancer. In addition to enumeration, there is great interest in the molecular characterization of CTCs. Nonetheless, this is technically challenging, especially with regards to RNA analysis, which requires immediate CTC processing to avoid RNA degradation. The purpo...

Background: Recently, it was described that macrophages and tumor cells can fuse to form tumor macrophage fusion cells (TMFs) which are detectable within primary tumors and patient’s (pts) circulation. However, there are multiple pathways and subsequent subtypes of TMFs, with limited data on the various TMF types, commonality in blood, and clinical...

Purpose: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is defined by the lack of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2) expression. In this study, we compared response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy and survival between patients with TNBC and non-TNBC. Patients and methods: Analysis of a pros...

Breast cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer mortality in women. Endocrine therapy is the backbone treatment for hormone receptor (HR)-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative breast cancer, the most common subtype. Although several endocrine therapy agents are available, essentially all HR-positive metastatic...

What is this summary about?: This is a summary of an article about a study called "P-REALITY X" that was published in the medical journal npj Breast Cancer in October 2022. "P-REALITY X" stands for Palbociclib REAl-world first-LIne comparaTive effectiveness studY eXtended. This study used information from a database to look at whether adding a sec...

Background CDK4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i) in combination with endocrine therapy (ET) have a well-established role in the management of hormone receptor-positive (HR+)/HER2- metastatic breast cancer (MBC). The benefit of continuing CDK4/6i beyond progression in combination with a different ET has not been confirmed. Preclinical data suggest synergy bet...

Background. Because of its high metastatic potential, inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is the most lethal and aggressive form of breast cancer. We previously demonstrated that Myristoylated Alanine-Rich C Kinase Substrate (MARCKS) protein overexpression was associated with shorter metastasis-free survival (MFS) in IBC patients, but not in non-IBC (...

Background: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) captured from the blood of cancer patients may serve as a non-invasive surrogate source of tumor material to investigate tumor characteristics in real-time. However, the only FDA-cleared CTC assay is limited to the enumeration of surface marker-defined epithelial cells and not designed for further characte...

Background: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in breast cancer (BC) are commonly defined as epithelial cells (EPCAM and cytokeratin (CK) positive), lacking the universal blood cell marker CD45. Nonetheless, CTCs expressing both CK and CD45 (= dual-positive, DP cells) can be observed in the blood of cancer patients. Early evidence suggests that DP cell...

Introduction: Acquired ESR1 mutations (mutESR1) after long-term endocrine therapy drive treatment resistance, metastasis, and poor prognosis for patients (pts) with ER+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer (mBC). Lasofoxifene (LAS), a selective estrogen receptor modulator, alone or with a CDK4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) reduced tumor growth better than fulves...

Background GATA3 mutations (GATA3mut) have been reported in 10-20% of hormone receptor positive (HR+) breast cancers. It has been shown that targeting GATA3mut HR+ breast cancer with MDM2 inhibitors invokes synthetic lethality. MDM2 is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that targets p53 for degradation, and research suggests that restoring p53 by blocking MDM2...

Background: ESR1 hotspot mutations (HS) (i.e. 380, 536, 537, and 538) are important drivers of resistance to aromatase inhibitors, but the differential impact of genomic variants (HS vs non-HS) on response to endocrine therapies (ET) under clinical development, such as novel oral Selective Estrogen Receptor Degraders and Modulators (SERDs and SERMs...

Background: CDK4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i) paired with endocrine therapy (ET) are considered first-line (1L) therapy for patients (pts) with HR+ HER2- advanced breast cancer (aBC). A minority of pts will demonstrate primary resistance to CDK4/6i, as characterized by early progression. Thymidine kinase 1 (TK1) is a cell-cycle regulated enzyme downstrea...

Background: Gedatolisib is a potent reversible dual inhibitor that selectively targets all Class I isoforms of phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) and mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR). Two separate pivotal clinical trials demonstrated that PI3K and mTOR inhibitors are active in combination with endocrine therapy and prolong progression-free surv...

Background: Recent groundbreaking work has shown that patients with lower levels of HER2-expression (HER2-low) may benefit from treatment with trastuzumab deruxtecan—an HER2 antibody-drug conjugate FDA-approved for treatment for HER2-positive (HER2+) patients and thus can represent a new molecular subtype. In fact, this HER2-low patient population...

Breast cancer (BC) is a heterogeneous disease comprising different clinical, histopathological, and molecular subtypes. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is among the most aggressive clinical manifestations of breast cancer (BC), and represents a significant clinical challenge to the effective treatment of early metastatic and treatment-refracto...

Despite the rapid utilization of immunotherapy, emerging challenges to the current immune checkpoint blockade need to be resolved. Here, we report that elevation of CD73 levels due to its aberrant turnover is correlated with poor prognosis in immune-cold triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs). We have identified TRIM21 as an E3 ligase that governs...

We recently identified a cell-of-origin-specific mRNA signature associated with metastasis and poor outcome in triple-negative carcinoma (TNBC). This TNBC cell-of-origin signature is associated with the over-expression of histone deacetylases and zinc finger protein HDAC1, HDAC7, and ZNF92, respectively. Based on this signature, we discovered that...

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is an aggressive disease for which the spectrum of preclinical models was rather limited in the past. More recently, novel cell lines and xenografts have been developed. This study evaluates the transcriptome of an extended series of IBC preclinical models and performed a comparative analysis with patient samples to...

Background Limited data exist to characterise molecular differences in circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) for patients with invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC). We analysed metastatic breast cancer patients with ctDNA testing to assess genomic differences among patients with ILC, invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), and mixed histology. Methods We retrospect...

Introduction: Palbociclib is highly efficacious and well tolerated in hormone-receptor positive (HR+) metastatic breast cancer (BC) but its activity for HER2+ BC with brain metastases (BM) is unknown. Methods: In a single-arm phase II study we evaluated palbociclib with trastuzumab for patients with HER2+ MBC and BM. The primary endpoint was BM...

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) captured from the blood of cancer patients may serve as a surrogate source of tumor material that can be obtained via a venipuncture (also known as a liquid biopsy) and used to better understand tumor characteristics. However, the only FDA-cleared CTC assay has been limited to the enumeration of surface marker–defined...