About a quarter of all patients with newly diagnosed triple-negative breast cancer will not benefit from neoadjuvant checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy with an agent such as pembrolizumab—even though it improves outcomes among the remaining majority.

At the 14th European Breast Cancer Conference, held in Milan, Italy, Laura van ’t Veer, PhD, Program Leader of the Breast Oncology Program at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, reported findings from the I-SPY2 TRIAL showing that analysis of “response predictive subtypes” identified a subset of patients with triple-negative early-stage breast cancers with a very low likelihood of response to neoadjuvant immunotherapy and can be spared potential toxicities.

After her talk in Milan, van ’t Veer called in to the OncTimesTalk studio to talk about the I-SPY findings with Peter Goodwin.