Dataset Information

Effect of Pembrolizumab Plus Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy on Pathologic Complete Response in Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer: An Analysis of the Ongoing Phase 2 Adaptively Randomized I-SPY2 Trial.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Approximately 25% of patients with early-stage breast cancer who receive (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy experience a recurrence within 5 years. Improvements in therapy are greatly needed.

Objective

To determine if pembrolizumab plus neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) in early-stage breast cancer is likely to be successful in a 300-patient, confirmatory randomized phase 3 neoadjuvant clinical trial.

Design, setting, and participants

The I-SPY2 study is an ongoing open-label, multicenter, adaptively randomized phase 2 platform trial for high-risk, stage II/III breast cancer, evaluating multiple investigational arms in parallel. Standard NACT serves as the common control arm; investigational agent(s) are added to this backbone. Patients with ERBB2 (formerly HER2)-negative breast cancer were eligible for randomization to pembrolizumab between November 2015 and November 2016.

Interventions

Participants were randomized to receive taxane- and anthracycline-based NACT with or without pembrolizumab, followed by definitive surgery.

Main outcomes and measures

The primary end point was pathologic complete response (pCR). Secondary end points were residual cancer burden (RCB) and 3-year event-free and distant recurrence-free survival. Investigational arms graduated when demonstrating an 85% predictive probability of success in a hypothetical confirmatory phase 3 trial.

Results

Of the 250 women included in the final analysis, 181 were randomized to the standard NACT control group (median [range] age, 47 [24.77] years). Sixty-nine women (median [range] age, 50 [27-71] years) were randomized to 4 cycles of pembrolizumab in combination with weekly paclitaxel followed by AC; 40 hormone receptor (HR)-positive and 29 triple-negative. Pembrolizumab graduated in all 3 biomarker signatures studied. Final estimated pCR rates, evaluated in March 2017, were 44% vs 17%, 30% vs 13%, and 60% vs 22% for pembrolizumab vs control in the ERBB2-negative, HR-positive/ERBB2-negative, and triple-negative cohorts, respectively. Pembrolizumab shifted the RCB distribution to a lower disease burden for each cohort evaluated. Adverse events included immune-related endocrinopathies, notably thyroid abnormalities (13.0%) and adrenal insufficiency (8.7%). Achieving a pCR appeared predictive of long-term outcome, where patients with pCR following pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy had high event-free survival rates (93% at 3 years with 2.8 years' median follow-up).

Conclusions and relevance

When added to standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy, pembrolizumab more than doubled the estimated pCR rates for both HR-positive/ERBB2-negative and triple-negative breast cancer, indicating that checkpoint blockade in women with early-stage, high-risk, ERBB2-negative breast cancer is highly likely to succeed in a phase 3 trial. Pembrolizumab was the first of 10 agents to graduate in the HR-positive/ERBB2-negative signature.

Trial registration

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01042379.

SUBMITTER: Nanda R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7058271 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Effect of Pembrolizumab Plus Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy on Pathologic Complete Response in Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer: An Analysis of the Ongoing Phase 2 Adaptively Randomized I-SPY2 Trial.

Nanda Rita R Liu Minetta C MC Yau Christina C Shatsky Rebecca R Pusztai Lajos L Wallace Anne A Chien A Jo AJ Forero-Torres Andres A Ellis Erin E Han Heather H Clark Amy A Albain Kathy K Boughey Judy C JC Jaskowiak Nora T NT Elias Anthony A Isaacs Claudine C Kemmer Kathleen K Helsten Teresa T Majure Melanie M Stringer-Reasor Erica E Parker Catherine C Lee Marie C MC Haddad Tufia T Cohen Ronald N RN Asare Smita S Wilson Amy A Hirst Gillian L GL Singhrao Ruby R Steeg Katherine K Asare Adam A Matthews Jeffrey B JB Berry Scott S Sanil Ashish A Schwab Richard R Symmans W Fraser WF van 't Veer Laura L Yee Douglas D DeMichele Angela A Hylton Nola M NM Melisko Michelle M Perlmutter Jane J Rugo Hope S HS Berry Donald A DA Esserman Laura J LJ

JAMA oncology 20200501 5

<h4>Importance</h4>Approximately 25% of patients with early-stage breast cancer who receive (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy experience a recurrence within 5 years. Improvements in therapy are greatly needed.<h4>Objective</h4>To determine if pembrolizumab plus neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) in early-stage breast cancer is likely to be successful in a 300-patient, confirmatory randomized phase 3 neoadjuvant clinical trial.<h4>Design, setting, and participants</h4>The I-SPY2 study is an ongoing open-la ...[more]

PMID: 32053137

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Project description:BackgroundTo investigate the association of axillary pathologic complete response (pCR) rate among breast cancer patients with pCR after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT).MethodsThe retrospective clinical data of 1,903 patients who were treated with NCT between March, 2010 and December, 2018, were collected from one Chinese database and analyzed. The correlations between clinicopathological characteristics and breast pCR with axillary pCR were calculated by χ2 test. Binary logistic regression analysis was used for multivariate analysis. The relative risk of positive axillary nodes after NCT in patients with and without breast pCR was analyzed using a Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel (CMH) test stratified by initial N stage and tumor subtype.ResultsThe rate of axillary pCR was increased in the cases with initial cN0, Ki67 high expression, HR+HER2+/HR-HER2+/TN subtypes, and breast pCR. After NCT, the relative risk of nodal disease burden was 4.81 in patients without breast pCR compared with patients with breast pCR. The relative risk of positive nodal status in patients with cN0, cN1, cN2, and cN3 disease without vs. with breast pCR was 6.45, 4.88, 5.69 and 6.24, respectively. The relative risk of positive nodal status in patients with HR+HER2-, HR+HER2+, HR-HER2+, and TN disease was 4.02, 4.50, 3.82 and 4.18, respectively. Of cN0 patients with breast pCR, only 4 out of 44 (9%) with HER2-positive disease had 1 or 2 axillary lymph node metastases at final surgical pathology compared to 30 out of 98 (31%) of those without breast pCR. There was no evidence of positive nodal residue among all 21 patients (100%) with TN disease compared to 65% (36 of 55) of patients without breast pCR.ConclusionsNodal status is strongly correlated with breast pCR after NCT. Patients with initial cN0/1 TN/HER2 positive disease who achieve breast pCR at surgery have a low risk of nodal metastasis. These results suggest that the failure rate of missing positive lymph nodes among those patients was very low and that it is safe for such patients to undergo sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) after NCT. This study also provides a theoretical basis for clinical trials focused on the avoidance of axillary surgery in selected patients.

Project description:ImportancePathologic complete response (pCR) is a known prognostic biomarker for long-term outcomes. The I-SPY2 trial evaluated if the strength of this clinical association persists in the context of a phase 2 neoadjuvant platform trial.ObjectiveTo evaluate the association of pCR with event-free survival (EFS) and pCR with distant recurrence-free survival (DRFS) in subpopulations of women with high-risk operable breast cancer treated with standard therapy or one of several novel agents.Design, setting, and participantsMulticenter platform trial of women with operable clinical stage 2 or 3 breast cancer with no prior surgery or systemic therapy for breast cancer; primary tumors were 2.5 cm or larger. Women with tumors that were ERBB2 negative/hormone receptor (HR) positive with low 70-gene assay score were excluded. Participants were adaptively randomized to one of several different investigational regimens or control therapy within molecular subtypes from March 2010 through 2016. The analysis included participants with follow-up data available as of February 26, 2019.InterventionsStandard-of-care neoadjuvant therapy consisting of taxane treatment with or without (as control) one of several investigational agents or combinations followed by doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide.Main outcomes and measuresPathologic complete response and 3-year EFS and DRFS.ResultsOf the 950 participants (median [range] age, 49 [23-77] years), 330 (34.7%) achieved pCR. Three-year EFS and DRFS for patients who achieved pCR were both 95%. Hazard ratios for pCR vs non-pCR were 0.19 for EFS (95% CI, 0.12-0.31) and 0.21 for DRFS (95% CI, 0.13-0.34) and were similar across molecular subtypes, varying from 0.14 to 0.18 for EFS and 0.10 to 0.20 for DRFS.Conclusions and relevanceThe 3-year outcomes from the I-SPY2 trial show that, regardless of subtype and/or treatment regimen, including 9 novel therapeutic combinations, achieving pCR after neoadjuvant therapy implies approximately an 80% reduction in recurrence rate. The goal of the I-SPY2 trial is to rapidly identify investigational therapies that may improve pCR when validated in a phase 3 confirmatory trial. Whether pCR is a validated surrogate in the sense that a therapy that improves pCR rate can be assumed to also improve long-term outcome requires further study.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01042379.

Dataset Information

Effect of Pembrolizumab Plus Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy on Pathologic Complete Response in Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer: An Analysis of the Ongoing Phase 2 Adaptively Randomized I-SPY2 Trial.

Importance

Objective

Design, setting, and participants

Interventions

Main outcomes and measures

Results

Conclusions and relevance

Trial registration

Publications

Effect of Pembrolizumab Plus Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy on Pathologic Complete Response in Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer: An Analysis of the Ongoing Phase 2 Adaptively Randomized I-SPY2 Trial.

Similar Datasets

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