The drug may help stop breast cancer from returning

June 15, 2023 — A drug that targets specific genes that help cancer cells thrive, when combined with hormonal therapy, may help women with a certain type of early-stage breast cancer, new research reports.

A targeted therapy drug has shown success for women with early-stage hormone receptor positive/HER2-negative breast cancer, according to research presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. The study showed that patients who received the drug ribociclib (Kisqali) to Those on standard hormone therapy had longer periods of time without symptoms after their first cancer treatment, compared to those who received only hormone therapy.

also, Adding the drug to hormonal therapy reduced the risk of the cancer returning by 25%. Hormone receptor positive/negative breast cancer accounts for about 65% to 70% of breast cancer cases in the United States, making it the most common subtype.

said Dennis Salamone, director of clinical and translational research at UCLA’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, who presented the findings at the meeting. “But we know that even with stage II disease, a third of those patients have recurrences, and with stage III disease, more than half of them recur even after two or three decades.”

Patients were followed for 34 months, with 20% completing 3 years of treatment with ribociclib, and 57% completing 2 years of treatment.

Cancer remission rates at 3 years were about 90% for patients receiving combination therapy, compared to just over 87% for those treated with hormonal therapy alone. The benefits observed in the ribociclib group were generally consistent across other subgroups of patients.

Ribociclib has also shown better results in overall survival and length of time without any signs or symptoms of cancer in the long term.

Patients are suffering [this type of cancer] “Now you have a new treatment option,” said Sylvia Adams, MD, an oncologist and director of the Breast Cancer Center at NYU Langone-Perlmutter Cancer Center. “Adding … ribociclib to endocrine therapy after surgery can reduce the risk of recurrence and improve survival.”

Another CDK4/6 inhibitor, abemaciclib, has been approved by the FDA for use along with hormone therapy, said Adams, who was not involved in the study. “Now we will have a second option, once ribociclib is approved for this indication, and we can decide with patients which of these two drugs to use based on side effect profiles and/or treatment duration,” she said.

For overall survival, the “head is in the right direction,” Salamon explained, but that a longer follow-up is needed to see if ribociclib makes a difference.