Testing PD-1 Inhibition With Neoadjuvant Anti-HER2 Therapy in Breast Cancer [Video]

At the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, researchers reported on a multicenter, phase II trial exploring the efficacy and safety of adding pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to the standard-of-care treatment of paclitaxel (Taxol), trastuzumab (Herceptin), and pertuzumab (Perjeta; THP) in chemotherapy-naive patients with invasive, HER2-positive breast cancer.

In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Jin Sun L. Bitar, MD, a breast oncologist from Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, explained the study background and design.

Following is a transcript of her remarks:

The neoHIP trial is a prospective, multicenter trial for HER2-positive early-stage breast cancer. So the trial was designed to test adding immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab to the standard-of-care HER2-targeted and chemo-based neoadjuvant regimen.

So the study was opened [in] 2018 with the study arms. So arm A we call THP, so that’s paclitaxel, trastuzumab, and pertuzumab. And then arm B is that arm A plus pembrolizumab, so with the immune checkpoint …