The treatment landscape for early-stage triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) continues to evolve with evidence from ongoing neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy trials.
A major development was the KEYNOTE-522 trial that established pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus neoadjuvant chemotherapy as a new standard of care for early TNBC.
"The KEYNOTE-522 trial is a pivotal trial that for the first time demonstrated that adding an anti-PD-1 antibody to the poly-chemotherapy backbone in the neoadjuvant setting significantly improved pathologic complete response rates," said Iris Zhi, MD, PhD, of NYU Langone Health in New York. The results of KEYNOTE-522 led to the regimen's FDA approval for high-risk early TNBC.
In May at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, final results from the study at a median follow-up of 7.8 years showed that neoadjuvant pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab continued to show significantly improved event-free and overall survival rates compared with chemotherapy alone.
However, as with many advances in cancer care, the trial results also left certain questions unanswered, or prompted new ones, about the best way to individualize care for these patients.
