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Sacituzumab Govitecan a 'New Option' in HR+ Metastatic Breast Cancer

— Jane Meisel, MD, discusses the implications of the TROPiCS-02 study

Last Updated June 29, 2022
MedpageToday

Patients with heavily pretreated hormone receptor (HR)-positive/HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer had a progression-free survival benefit with sacituzumab govitecan (Trodelvy) versus physician's choice of chemotherapy, according to the phase III TROPiCS-02 study. The results were presented at the .

In this exclusive 51˶ video, , of the Winship Cancer Center at Emory University in Atlanta, offers her takeaways on the implications of the data.

Following is a transcript of her remarks:

The TROPiCS-02 study was a study for patients with estrogen-positive heavily pretreated metastatic breast cancer. So these were patients who had gone through a number of lines of endocrine therapy and between two and four lines of chemotherapy already -- so a very heavily pretreated patient population. 95% of the women on the study had visceral metastases and had received a median prior line of three chemotherapies in addition to all their hormone-based therapies.

And these patients were randomized to receive either sacituzumab govitecan, which is an antibody drug conjugate, or physician's choice chemotherapy. So there were a number of chemos that their doctors could choose from if they ended up on the chemo arm.

And what the trial found is that patients who received the sacituzumab govitecan did better in terms of progression-free survival. And then if you look at 6 month and 12 month time points to see how many patients on each arm of the study remained on the treatment they started on versus had progressed, there was a significant benefit to the sacituzumab govitecan.

So for example, at 12 months, which is a really long time point for patients who have had this many lines of therapy, 21% of the patients on sacituzumab were still on sacituzumab at 12 months versus only 7% of the patients who were on chemotherapy.

So the implications are that I think this will become a new option for patients with heavily pretreated, estrogen-positive metastatic disease and maybe something that really changes the lives of women for the better.

So it's FDA approved for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. And we are using it routinely in those patients. And I think that we will need, of course, FDA approval and the data published to support the TROPiCS-02 study and using it in the ER-positive population. But I imagine that will come and this will be a new option for those patients as well.

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    Greg Laub is the Senior Director of Video and currently leads the video and podcast production teams.