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New possible steps forward in the fight against breast cancer. Treatment with the drug abemaciclib, in combination with standard endocrine therapy, after surgery was found to increase the chances of survival without invasive disease or recurrence by about a third when given to patients with early-stage breast cancer but at high risk of disease spread and recurrence. This is what emerged from the results of the phase 3 monarchE study, presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) and simultaneously published in the pages of the specialized journal The Lancet Oncology.
The results of the clinical trial
The clinical study, involving patients with high-risk, hormone receptor-positive, HER2- and node-positive early breast cancer, found that the risk of developing invasive disease was reduced by 33.6% with a four-year invasive disease-free survival rate of 85.8% in women treated with abemaciclib. While the probability of developing metastatic disease was reduced by 34.1%, with 88.4% of patients who did not present distant disease.
More results
The Phase 3 trial also found a reduction in deaths in patients treated with abemaciclib with hormone therapy compared with those treated with hormone therapy alone.
“The continued strengthening of abemaciclib’s adjuvant benefit at four years further underscores the potential importance of these data for women and men with HR+, HER2-, node-positive, and high-risk early breast cancer,” he said. Valentina Guarneri, full professor of Medical Oncology and director of Oncology 2 at the Istituto Oncologico Veneto IRCCS. These results, “are of the utmost clinical relevance both for the extent of the benefit induced by abemaciclib, and because this benefit concerns patients with cancer which, although in the initial stages, is at a higher risk of recurrence after surgery”, he said. concluded Lucia Del Mastro, professor of Oncology at the University of Genoa and director of the Medical Oncology Clinic of the San Martino Hospital.