/ The Digital of Albacete /
The United States Drug Agency (FDA) has issued a note granting accelerated approval to the drug pembrolizumab in combination with chemotherapy for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic locally recurrent triple negative breast cancer
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Metastatic triple negative breast cancer has been one of the main challenges of the international scientific community for years, and battles such as the one just published by the prestigious Lancet journal led by the Spanish oncologist Javier Cortés and in which involves a score of researchers from various countries. This work has succeeded in proving a long-lasting antitumor activity and acceptable safety in patients with inoperable, locally recurrent, metastatic triple negative breast cancer that has not been previously treated.
The work has been coordinated by the Spanish oncologist Javier Cortés, Director of the Breast Cancer Unit of the IOB Institute of Oncology in Madrid and director of the International Breast Cancer Center in Barcelona and winner of the 2020 National Medicine Prize in pectore. He has been joined by a large group of scientists from several countries, who have presented the study that concludes that the administration of the drug pembrolizumab together with the usual chemotherapy process improves the antitumor activity compared to patients who were only administered chemotherapy without thereby seriously increase toxicity.
This conclusion has been reached after the completion of a phase 3 trial with 847 patients from 209 hospitals and 29 countries in Europe, North America, Asia and Latin America for eighteen months. Some patients were administered the aforementioned drug and chemotherapy and others, randomly, only chemotherapy. The group of patients treated with pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy showed a better evolution of the pathology compared to those who were treated with standard chemotherapy. In the words of Dr. Cortés “this is a good treatment option for patients with triple negative breast cancer with PD-L1 expression.” And he continues, “from our point of view, offering immunotherapy to a significant number of patients is a reasonable alternative that needs to be explored. At the IOB in Madrid, we are fortunate to be able to offer immunotherapy to the majority of our patients when metastatic disease is first diagnosed.
The presented advance offers more treatment options for patients with advanced disease whose diagnosis does not allow surgical intervention since it has achieved a greater progression-free survival, which is an achievement for the international scientific community that is already working on future advances.
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