Publications by authors named "Laura J van ‘t Veer"

Background: Estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer patients have a long-term risk of distant metastatic disease, and premenopausal patients have a higher risk. Randomized studies with long-term follow-up are essential to understand treatment benefit. We elucidated the long-term tamoxifen therapy benefit by menopausal status in the Stockholm tamoxifen trials with 20 years complete follow-up.

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Purpose: We investigated the small-molecule receptor tyrosine kinase-inhibitor of colony-stimulating factor-1 receptor pexidartinib in the stage II/III breast cancer in the I-SPY2 platform trial.

Methods: I-SPY2 is an adaptive platform trial that features multiple arms of experimental agents administered on a background of standard neoadjuvant therapy with paclitaxel and adriamycin/cyclophosphamide, followed by definitive surgery. The adaptive randomization engine preferentially assigns patients based upon cumulative performance of each agent in a given breast cancer subtype based on hormone receptor and HER2 receptor status.

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  • In early-stage breast cancer (EBC) patients, there is a need for biomarkers to predict the risk of late recurrence and the benefit from extended endocrine therapy (EET), specifically using the MammaPrint 70-gene assay to identify low-risk tumors.
  • The study analyzed postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive EBC from the IDEAL trial to see if the MammaPrint assay could help decide between 2.5 years and 5 years of treatment with letrozole.
  • Results showed that patients with low-risk tumors had a significant benefit of 10.1% for distant recurrence with longer treatment, while no significant benefits were found for high-risk or ultralow risk patients regarding treatment duration
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Background: This multicenter and retrospective study investigated the additive value of tumor morphologic features derived from the functional tumor volume (FTV) tumor mask at pre-treatment (T0) and the early treatment time point (T1) in the prediction of pathologic outcomes for breast cancer patients undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Methods: A total of 910 patients enrolled in the multicenter I-SPY 2 trial were included. FTV and tumor morphologic features were calculated from the dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI.

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Purpose: The MammaPrint (MP) prognostic assay categorizes breast cancers into high- and low-risk subgroups, and the high-risk group can be further subdivided into high-1 (MP-H1), and very high-risk high-2 (MP-H2). The aim of this analysis was to assess clinical and molecular differences between the hormone receptor-positive (HR+)/HER2-negative MP-H1, -H2, and triple-negative (TN) MP-H1 and -H2 cancers.

Experimental Design: Pretreatment gene expression data from 742 HER2-negative breast cancers enrolled in the I-SPY2 neoadjuvant trial were used.

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Small, hormone receptor-positive (HR+), HER2-negative (HER2-), lymph node-negative breast cancers are associated with relatively low rates of disease recurrence and have therefore been underrepresented in clinical trials assessing the effects of systemic therapy. Consequently, it remains uncertain if this patient population derives benefit from these treatments. For this exploratory analysis, we selected MINDACT (NCT00433589) patients with a HR+, HER2-, T1ab (≤1 cm) tumor and negative lymph nodes.

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Sequential adaptive trial designs can help accomplish the goals of personalized medicine, optimizing outcomes and avoiding unnecessary toxicity. Here we describe the results of incorporating a promising antibody-drug conjugate, datopotamab-deruxtecan (Dato-DXd) in combination with programmed cell death-ligand 1 inhibitor, durvalumab, as the first sequence of therapy in the I-SPY2.2 phase 2 neoadjuvant sequential multiple assignment randomization trial for high-risk stage 2/3 breast cancer.

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Among the goals of patient-centric care are the advancement of effective personalized treatment, while minimizing toxicity. The phase 2 I-SPY2.2 trial uses a neoadjuvant sequential therapy approach in breast cancer to further these goals, testing promising new agents while optimizing individual outcomes.

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Purpose: MammaPrint (MP) determines distant metastatic risk and may improve patient selection for extended endocrine therapy (EET). This study examined MP in predicting extended letrozole therapy (ELT) benefit in patients with early-stage breast cancer (BC) from the NSABP B-42 trial.

Patients And Methods: MP was tested in 1,866 patients randomly assigned to receive ELT or placebo.

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  • Biomarkers that help evaluate how well tumors respond to treatment and predict the risk of relapse are critical in clinical settings, with techniques like PET/CT or MRI commonly used for assessment.
  • Recently, liquid biopsies using circulating tumor DNA have emerged as a less invasive way to gauge treatment effectiveness through blood tests.
  • A review of existing research found only a few studies combining imaging and circulating tumor DNA to predict patient outcomes, indicating the need for larger studies to improve the accuracy and applicability of these predictive models.
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Unlabelled: Combinations of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI, including anti-PD-1/PD-L1) and chemotherapy have been FDA approved for metastatic and early-stage triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), but most patients do not benefit. B7-H4 is a B7 family ligand with proposed immunosuppressive functions being explored as a cancer immunotherapy target and may be associated with anti-PD-L1 resistance. However, little is known about its regulation and effect on immune cell function in breast cancers.

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From extrachromosomal DNA to neo-peptides, the broad reprogramming of the cancer genome leads to the emergence of molecules that are specific to the cancer state. We recently described orphan non-coding RNAs (oncRNAs) as a class of cancer-specific small RNAs with the potential to play functional roles in breast cancer progression. Here, we report a systematic and comprehensive search to identify, annotate, and characterize cancer-emergent oncRNAs across 32 tumor types.

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  • - This study analyzed the role of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) compared to cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in predicting treatment response and survival in breast cancer patients undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC), focusing on hormone receptor-positive/HER2-negative and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtypes.
  • - In TNBC, while cfDNA showed a weak correlation with residual cancer burden (RCB) early in treatment, ctDNA consistently correlated positively with RCB across all measured timepoints, suggesting ctDNA is a better indicator of treatment response.
  • - For hormone receptor-positive/HER2-negative patients, high levels of cfDNA before treatment indicated worse distant recurrence-free survival (DRFS), unlike in TNBC where
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This is a secondary data analysis of the TIPPING study, which included 1,121 patients with stage I-III breast cancer who had enumeration of CTCs (by either CellSearch or immunomagnetic enrichment and flow cytometry [IE/FC]) and disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) at the time of surgical resection between 1999 and 2012. The primary endpoint was mean number of CTCs by histology, taking into account method of detection and treatment type, and evaluation of histology specific prognostic cutpoints. Overall, patients with ILC had significantly higher CTC counts than those with IDC, a finding which persisted in the 382 patients with CTC enumeration by IE/FC method.

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  • The study explored the association between a 70-gene risk score and the likelihood of locoregional recurrence (LRR) in early-stage breast cancer patients who underwent breast-conserving surgery (BCS).
  • Out of 6,693 patients, 5,470 had BCS, with an 8-year LRR incidence of 3.2%, and a lower 2.7% for those with a low-risk 70-gene signature.
  • The findings suggest that while the 70-gene signature is not an independent predictor for LRR at this time, the overall low recurrence rate indicates potential for reducing the intensity of local therapy in future trials.
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Purpose: At the primary analysis, the APHINITY trial reported a statistically significant but modest benefit of adding pertuzumab to standard adjuvant chemotherapy plus trastuzumab in patients with histologically confirmed human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive early-stage breast cancer. This study evaluated whether the 80-gene molecular subtyping signature (80-GS) could identify patients within the APHINITY population who derive the most benefit from dual anti-HER2 therapy.

Methods: In a nested case-control study design of 1,023 patients (matched event to control ratio of 3:1), the 80-GS classified breast tumors into functional luminal type, HER2 type, or basal type.

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Importance: There has been little consideration of genomic risk of recurrence by breast cancer subtype despite evidence of racial disparities in breast cancer outcomes.

Objective: To evaluate associations between clinical trial end points, namely pathologic complete response (pCR) and distant recurrence-free survival (DRFS), and race and examine whether gene expression signatures are associated with outcomes by race.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This retrospective cohort study used data from the Investigation of Serial Studies to Predict Your Therapeutic Response With Imaging and Molecular Analysis 2 (I-SPY 2) multicenter clinical trial of neoadjuvant chemotherapy with novel agents and combinations for patients with previously untreated stage II/III breast cancer.

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  • ENPP1 is linked to poor cancer prognosis and regulates the immune response by hydrolyzing cGAMP, which activates the STING pathway to enhance anti-tumor immunity.
  • Research using single-cell RNA sequencing found that ENPP1 promotes the growth and spread of breast tumors by reducing the effectiveness of cGAMP-STING signaling.
  • Blocking ENPP1 activity could be a promising treatment strategy for breast cancer by allowing cGAMP to activate STING, potentially improving patient outcomes after therapies like pembrolizumab.
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  • Trebananib is a peptibody that stops angiopoietin-1 and -2 from activating Tie2 receptors, which helps inhibit cancer growth, and it was tested alongside paclitaxel in the I-SPY2 breast cancer trial.* -
  • The trial involved patients with high-risk, early-stage breast cancer being randomly assigned to receive either trebananib with paclitaxel or a control, with the main goal being to evaluate the pathologic complete response (pCR) rate.* -
  • Although trebananib did not meet the criteria to advance for further testing, it showed promising pCR rates and improved 3-year event-free survival without significantly increasing side effects, highlighting potential biomarkers
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  • - The study focuses on categorizing breast cancer through hormone receptor (HR) and HER2 status, as well as gene expression profiles related to immune response and DNA repair, while also mapping protein pathway activation using data from the I-SPY 2 Trial.
  • - Researchers discovered specific protein biomarkers, such as cyclin D1 and estrogen receptor alpha, that help predict treatment response or resistance, indicating their potential for guiding therapy choices.
  • - A new predictive signature based on HER2 activation was introduced to better stratify triple-negative breast cancer patients for targeted therapies, highlighting how protein activation signatures can complement existing molecular classification methods.
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Background: Despite major improvements in treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC), only few patients achieve complete remission and remain progression free for a prolonged time. The tumor immune microenvironment plays an important role in the response to treatment in HER2-positive breast cancer and could contain valuable prognostic information. Detailed information on the cancer-immune cell interactions in HER2-positive MBC is however still lacking.

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Purpose: Oligometastatic breast cancer (OMBC) has a more favorable outcome than widespread metastatic breast cancer. Some patients with OMBC achieve long-term remission if treated with multimodality therapy, including systemic and locally ablative therapies. However, not all patients with OMBC benefit from such treatment, while all experience toxicity.

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  • * In the I-SPY2 trial, ctDNA positivity is found to be more prevalent in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients compared to those with hormone receptor-positive (HR-positive)/HER2-negative breast cancer, indicating distinct differences in ctDNA shedding between these subtypes.
  • * Early clearance of ctDNA is predictive of a good response to treatment specifically in TNBC, while ctDNA negativity post-treatment is linked to better outcomes, and ongoing research will further explore ctDNA's potential to guide therapy adjustments.
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Purpose: ROR1 and ROR2 are Type 1 tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptors for Wnt5a that are associated with breast cancer progression. Experimental agents targeting ROR1 and ROR2 are in clinical trials. This study evaluated whether expression levels of ROR1 or ROR2 correlated with one another or with clinical outcomes.

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