When metastases occur, the prognosis of women with breast cancer becomes worse: the 5-year survival rate drops from 80–90% to around 20%.
Triple negative metastatic breast cancers account for almost 15% of breast cancers, against which oncologists have few therapeutic weapons. But a study brings new perspectives of care.
This work, called SAFIR02 Breast-Immuno, made it possible to assess the interest for patients of an immunotherapy treatment, durvalumab, an antibody targeting the PD-L1 protein (a protein which can be produced by cancer cells and which reduces the effectiveness of immune defenses).
7 more months
As a result, “a median overall survival of 21 months on durvalumab monotherapy versus 14 months on maintenance chemotherapy was observed, regardless of the level of expression of PD-L1”, explain the authors. “These results show significant efficacy when immunotherapy is given after chemotherapy, and suggest that all women with triple negative cancer could benefit from it when it was thought that only patients with a tumor expressing PD-L1 benefited from it ”.
“This study confirms the effectiveness of immunotherapy in triple negative breast cancer and will contribute to the routine adoption of this therapeutic class” concludes Prof Fabrice André, oncologist at Gustave Roussy (Villejuif).
* Unicancer, which brings together all of the Cancer Control Centers (CLCC), the French Breast Cancer Intergroup (UCBG) and the ARC Foundation
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