Publications by authors named "Erica Mayer"

Objectives: Fatigue is a common nonhematologic toxicity of the CDK4/6 inhibitor palbociclib in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients with prevalence rates of clinician-rated all-grade and grade 3/4 fatigue of 39.2% and 2.5%, respectively.

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  • * Effective strategies before and during treatment include identifying high-risk patients, optimizing blood glucose levels, and recommending lifestyle changes such as a low-carb diet and regular exercise.
  • * If hyperglycemia occurs, metformin is the first-line treatment, with other medications as alternatives, and a team approach is essential for ongoing monitoring and management to help patients continue their therapy effectively.
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Harmonized global collaborations are crucial to improving outcomes in hormone sensitive operable breast cancer.

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  • The study explores how low levels of HER2 expression affect breast cancer treatment outcomes and the success of hormone therapy in patients.
  • It analyzes data from a large international study called PALLAS, which included over 5,000 patients to see how HER2 status impacts survival rates and response to the drug palbociclib.
  • The research found that HER2-low levels are common and vary between countries, but HER2 status didn’t significantly change the success rate of hormone therapy in the patients.
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Purpose: Patients with HER2-positive breast cancer brain metastases have few effective systemic therapy options. In a prior study, pertuzumab with high-dose trastuzumab demonstrated a high clinical benefit rate (CBR) in the central nervous system (CNS) in patients with brain metastases. The current trial evaluated whether the addition of atezolizumab to this regimen would produce further improvements in CNS response.

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  • The study investigates how stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (sTILs) relate to survival in patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC).
  • The research showed that sTILs positively impacted progression-free survival in those receiving chemotherapy, but this link weakened after accounting for hormone receptor status.
  • The trial involved is CALGB 40502, which has since become part of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov.
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Purpose: Breast cancer mortality is higher in Black women than other racial groups. This difference has been partially attributed to a higher proportion of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). However, it is uncertain if survival disparities exist in racially diverse TNBC patients receiving similar treatments.

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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 progression or if the addition of checkpoint inhibitor therapy has value in this setting.

Methods: The randomized multicenter phase II PACE trial enrolled patients with hormone receptor-positive/HER2- MBC whose disease had progressed on previous CDK4/6i and aromatase inhibitor (AI) therapy. Patients were randomly assigned 1:2:1 to receive fulvestrant (F), fulvestrant plus palbociclib (F + P), or fulvestrant plus palbociclib and avelumab (F + P + A).

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Background: Overall survival (OS) is a universally accepted measure of clinical benefit; however, prolonged follow-up is needed to observe sufficient events. Disease-free survival (DFS) has been widely adopted as a primary endpoint for early breast cancer (EBC) trials, as follow-up is comparatively shorter. Here, we present an analysis evaluating DFS as a surrogate for OS for adjuvant treatment of hormone receptor-positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HR+/HER2-) EBC.

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  • NT-proBNP, a cardiac biomarker linked to heart failure and mortality, was found to be higher in cancer survivors compared to non-cancer adults, indicating potential health risks.
  • The study included a representative sample from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and indicated that higher NT-proBNP levels were associated with increased risks of overall and cardiac-related death among cancer survivors, especially in those with prostate and colorectal cancers.
  • Nonlinear relationships showed that higher risks of mortality were observable when NT-proBNP levels exceeded 125 pg/mL, emphasizing the need for monitoring this biomarker in cancer survivors.
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Background: Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are a better tool for evaluating the experiences of patients who have symptomatic, treatment-associated adverse events (AEs) compared with clinician-rated AEs. The authors present PROs assessing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and treatment-related neurotoxicity for adjuvant capecitabine versus platinum on the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group-American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ECOG-ACRIN) EA1131 trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02445391).

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  • * Through advanced imaging techniques, researchers assessed the relationship between the vascular structure of the tumors and the treatment response, revealing that tumors responding to the drug had a more balanced blood vessel composition compared to resistant ones.
  • * The findings suggest that understanding the vascular architecture could enhance our knowledge of how immune therapies work in the brain, potentially guiding future treatment strategies.
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  • The study investigates the safety of using taxane-based chemotherapy for breast cancer during pregnancy, focusing on the risks for both mothers and newborns.
  • It involved 103 patients, primarily treated with paclitaxel and anthracyclines, with a median taxane initiation at 28 weeks of gestation.
  • Results showed a low incidence of severe adverse events, with a high live birth rate and generally favorable obstetric outcomes, supporting the use of taxanes during pregnancy when necessary.
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Purpose: Metronomic chemotherapy has the potential to offer tumor control with reduced toxicity when compared to standard dose chemotherapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer. As metronomic chemotherapy may target the tumor microvasculature, it has the potential for synergistic effects with antiangiogenic agents such as the VEGF-A inhibitor bevacizumab.

Methods: In this randomized phase II study, patients with metastatic breast cancer were randomized to receive metronomic oral cyclophosphamide and methotrexate (CM) combined with bevacizumab (Arm A) or CM alone (Arm B).

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Background: Racial and ethnic disparities in outcomes after treatment for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) are largely unknown. The objective of this study was to examine breast cancer outcomes by race and ethnicity in the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) B-35 clinical trial.

Patients And Methods: The NSABP B-35 trial randomized postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive DCIS treated with breast-conserving therapy to 5 years of tamoxifen or anastrozole.

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  • Tumor angiogenesis often leads to abnormal blood vessel development, which is linked to treatment resistance and immune suppression in cancers, specifically brain metastases.
  • A study using perfusion MRI on 44 patients treated with the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab revealed that responsive tumors had balanced vascular structures, promoting better blood flow and a supportive immune environment.
  • In contrast, resistant tumors exhibited chaotic blood vessels and low immune cell presence, with early functional changes detectable through MRI that indicated resistance before conventional imaging could.
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Background: There are limited data examining racial disparities in locoregional recurrence (LRR) among women with access to high-quality care. We aimed to examine differences in late LRR by race in patients with stage I-IIIA, hormone receptor-positive (HR+) breast cancer enrolled in the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel (NSABP) B-42 trial.

Methods: From 2006 to 2010, 3966 postmenopausal women with stage I-IIIA HR+ breast cancer who were disease-free after 5 years of endocrine therapy were randomized to an additional 5 years of endocrine therapy or placebo.

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Purpose: A 3-biomarker homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) score is a key component of a currently FDA-approved companion diagnostic assay to identify HRD in patients with ovarian cancer using a threshold score of ≥ 42, though recent studies have explored the utility of a lower threshold (GIS ≥ 33). The present study evaluated whether the ovarian cancer thresholds may also be appropriate for major breast cancer subtypes by comparing the genomic instability score (GIS) distributions of BRCA1/2-deficient estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer (ER + BC) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) to the GIS distribution of BRCA1/2-deficient ovarian cancer.

Methods: Ovarian cancer and breast cancer (ER + BC and TNBC) tumors from ten study cohorts were sequenced to identify pathogenic BRCA1/2 mutations, and GIS was calculated using a previously described algorithm.

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Purpose: BMI affects breast cancer risk and prognosis. In contrast to cytotoxic chemotherapy, CDK4/6 inhibitors are given at a fixed dose, irrespective of BMI or weight. This preplanned analysis of the global randomized PALLAS trial investigates the impact of BMI on the side-effect profile, treatment adherence, and efficacy of palbociclib.

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  • Brain metastases (BMs) are increasingly common in cancer patients, and the study evaluates the effectiveness of pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug, in treating 57 patients with untreated and recurrent BMs.
  • The trial found that 42.1% of patients experienced an intracranial benefit, with a median overall survival of 8 months, and a portion of patients (12.3%) survived over 2 years.
  • However, over half of the subjects reported serious side effects, indicating a need for more research to understand which patients might respond best to this treatment and why some experience resistance.
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Detecting mutations from single DNA molecules is crucial in many fields but challenging. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) affords tremendous throughput but cannot directly sequence double-stranded DNA molecules ('single duplexes') to discern the true mutations on both strands. Here we present Concatenating Original Duplex for Error Correction (CODEC), which confers single duplex resolution to NGS.

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mutation (m) 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 selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD) that in a phase II study significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS) over fulvestrant (also a SERD) in ER+/HER2- ABC. SERENA-6 (NCT04964934) is a randomized, double-blind, phase III study evaluating the efficacy and safety of switching from an AI to camizestrant, while maintaining the same CDK4/6i, upon detection of m in circulating tumor DNA before clinical disease progression on first-line therapy for HR+/HER2- ABC.

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For high-risk early-stage hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer (HR + /HER2 - EBC), short- and long-term recurrence risks remain substantial despite local control with surgery and radiation and systemic treatment with chemotherapy and endocrine therapy (ET). Recent trials have provided new strategies for reducing recurrence. The monarchE trial demonstrated that adding 2 years of adjuvant abemaciclib to ET improves invasive disease-free survival (iDFS) and distant recurrence-free survival (DRFS).

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