VIDEO: It’s too early to give up on immunotherapy for breast cancer

MIAMI BEACH – The remarkable progress seen with immune checkpoint inhibitors in metastatic melanoma, non–small-cell lung cancer, and other tumors has yet to be replicated in breast cancer, but it’s early days yet, and breast cancer researchers need more time before the ultimate clinical benefits of immunotherapy in breast cancer can be ascertained, said Adam M. Brufsky, MD, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh.

Early studies with inhibitors of programmed death-1 (PD-1) and its ligand PD-L1 in patients with advanced triple-negative breast cancer have yielded only minimal response rates to date, but it it’s far too early to give up on the concept, Dr. Brufsky cautioned at the annual Miami Breast Cancer Conference, held by Physicians’ Education Resource.

In a video interview, he discussed the challenges of treating breast cancers, which may be less immunogenic and have a lower tumor mutational burden than other malignancies that respond more readily to PD-1 inhibition. Several large, phase III clinical trials of checkpoint inhibitors combined with cytotoxic chemotherapy are underway, he said, and those eventual findings may shed light on the optimal approach to using immunotherapy to treat patients with refractory metastatic breast cancers.