Dr. Jeremy Braybrooke is a consultant medical oncologist and clinical lead for oncology at University Hospitals Bristol, as well as a senior clinical research fellow at the University of Oxford. Rosie Bradley is a medical statistician in the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford.

At the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, Rosie presented the results of their meta-analysis of four studies looking at effectiveness of aromatase inhibitors compared to tamoxifen in pre-menopausal women diagnosed with early-stage, hormone receptor-positive disease.

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Dr. Aditya Bardia is associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the breast cancer research program at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.

At the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, he presented results from the EMERALD trial, comparing the experimental medicine elacestrant to the standard of care for post-menopausal women diagnosed with metastatic, hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer that has grown during treatment with hormonal therapy. That standard of care is either Faslodex or an aromatase inhibitor.

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Dr. Avonne Connor is assistant professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. Much of Dr. Connor’s research focuses on cancer health disparities in women, especially cancer risk factors that people have some control over, such as drinking alcohol, weight, exercise, and smoking.

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Dr. Brian Wojciechowski practices medical oncology in Delaware County, Pennsylvania at Riddle, Taylor, and Crozer hospitals and also serves as Breastcancer.org's medical adviser. A native of South Philadelphia, he trained at Temple University School of Medicine and Lankenau Medical Center. Dr. Wojciechowski is a sought-after speaker on the topics of medical ethics and the biology of cancer.

Dr. Wojciechowski joined us to talk about some of the most notable research at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress 2021.

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Running time: 14:09

Dr. Gabriel Hortobagyi is professor of breast medical oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is a past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and is one of the world’s leading authorities on breast cancer treatment. He has published more than 1,000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

At the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress 2021, Dr. Hortobagyi presented overall survival results from the MONALEESA-2 trial, which compared the combination of Kisqali and Femara to Femara alone to treat advanced-stage hormone-receptor-positive HER2-negative breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Earlier results from the study found that adding Kisqali to Femara improved progression-free survival — the amount of time the women lived without the cancer growing. These new results found that the combination of Kisqali and Femara also improved overall survival — the length of time women lived whether the cancer grew or not.

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Dr. Hope Rugo is professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology at the University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she is also the director of breast oncology and clinical trials education. Dr. Rugo is also a member of the Breastcancer.org Professional Advisory Board. She is a principal investigator of a number of clinical trials looking at combining new targeted and immunotherapy medicines with standard treatments for both early-stage and advanced-stage breast cancer and has published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers.

At the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress 2021, Dr. Rugo presented final results from the KEYNOTE-355 trial, which was looking to see if Keytruda (chemical name: pembrolizumab) and chemotherapy were better than chemotherapy alone as a first treatment for metastatic PD-L1-positive, triple-negative breast cancer. Earlier results found that adding Keytruda to chemotherapy improved progression-free survival — how long people lived before the cancer grew — for this type of breast cancer. These new results show that adding Keytruda improves overall survival — how long people live whether the breast cancer grows or not.

Listen to the podcast to hear Dr. Rugo explain:

Running time: 25:03