ASCO 2025: Key Highlights in Metastatic Breast Cancer
The 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting featured several major advances in metastatic breast cancer, which Heather McArthur, MD, reports on here. In triple-negative disease, the ASCENT-04 trial showed that combining sacituzumab govitecan with pembrolizumab significantly improved progression-free survival, suggesting a new standard for programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1)-positive patients.
In HER2-positive disease, trastuzumab deruxtecan plus pertuzumab reduced the risk for progression or death vs the CLEOPATRA regimen in the DESTINY-Breast09 study, particularly benefiting hormone receptor-negative patients. Finally, the VERITAC-2 study showed that the oral PROTAC vepdegestrant significantly benefited patients with ESR1-mutated, estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, HER2-negative tumors, adding a promising targeted option to the treatment landscape.
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