James Reeves, MD Co-Authors Abstract Evaluating Abemaciclib Combined with Adjuvant Endocrine Therapy in Patients with High Risk Early Breast Cancer

Fort Myers, Fla., June 28, 2021 – Medical oncologist James Reeves, MD, a member of the Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS) Clinical Research Team, is co-author of an abstract entitled “Abemaciclib combined with adjuvant endocrine therapy in patients with high risk early breast cancer who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC).” Presented at the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2021 Annual Meeting and subsequently published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), the abstract reviewed monarchE, a phase 3 study that evaluated abemaciclib, a type of targeted therapy known as a CDK 4/6 inhibitor, combined with adjuvant endocrine therapy (ET) in patients with HR+, HER2-, high risk early breast cancer (EBC).

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), “Nearly 90% of people diagnosed with breast cancer have early-stage disease. And most of the time the cancer is classified as HR-positive and HER2-negative.” * Standard treatment for this type of EBC includes surgery and radiation, “… followed by adjuvant treatment with hormone-blocking drugs (also called endocrine therapy) and, for many patients, chemotherapy. In some instances, patients will receive a short course of chemotherapy before surgery, also known as neoadjuvant therapy, to shrink the tumor and improve the chances that it can be completely removed.” *

Due to major advances in treatment, the long-term prognosis for HR-positive, HER2-negative EBC is

generally, very positive; however, some percentage of patients are at high-risk for relapse.  In their abstract presentation, Dr. Reeves and his co-authors evaluated clinical and pathological measures of response, stating that the monarchE study reported “… abemaciclib + ET demonstrated treatment benefit, in terms of invasive disease-free survival (IDFS) vs ET alone.”

The abstract concluded, “Patients with HR+, HER2- EBC who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy were noted to be at a higher risk of recurrence. In this subgroup, abemaciclib combined with endocrine therapy (ET) demonstrated a clinically meaningful treatment benefit in invasive disease-free survival (IDFS) and distant relapse-free survival (DRFS), which was numerically greater than in the intent-to-treat (ITT) population.”

To access the abstract: https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/JCO.2021.39.15_suppl.517

*Additional resource – National Cancer Institute: https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021/abemaciclib-early-stage-breast-cancer

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