Women with High-Risk Breast Cancer Benefit from Immunotherapy Before Surgery

By Rob Dillard - Last Updated: March 26, 2025

A new study shows that Women with HER2-negative breast cancer who are treated before surgery with immunotherapy plus a PARP inhibitor with chemotherapy having a higher rate eradicating cancer from the breast and lymph nodes. The findings were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) virtual annual meeting.

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In this study, 73 patients in an experimental arm were administered durvalumab, olaparib, and paclitaxel chemotherapy followed by doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide chemotherapy, while 229 patients in a control arm received the standard treatment of paclitaxel plus doxorubicin/ cyclophosphamide.

Subsequently, researchers observed that women with triple negative cancer who received the combination treatment saw a pCR rate of 47%, juxtaposed to those given the standard chemotherapy with a pCR rate of 27%. Patients with estrogen-positive/HER2-negative cancer in the experimental arm experienced a pCR rate of 28%, versus 14% for those in the control arm. Patients in the experimental arm, however, were also more likely to experience grade 3 serious adverse events–58% in the experimental arm compared to 41% in the control arm.

Lajos Pusztai, M.D., Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and Director of Breast Cancer Translational Research at YCC and lead researcher said in a press release that: “The results provide further evidence for the clinical value of immunotherapy in early stage breast cancer and suggest new avenues to use these drugs, particularly in estrogen receptor (ER)-positive/HER2-negative breast cancers.”

 

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