Patients with non-basal triple-negative breast cancer are those who benefit most from chemotherapy with oral capecitabine as adjuvant treatment, according to a new analysis of the patient population of the phase III clinical trial GEICAM/2003-11_CIBOMA/2004-01, called GEICAM/CIBOMA, carried out by GEICAM and the Ibero-American Coalition for Research in Breast Oncology (CIBOMA). The results of the study open the way to being able to identify patients to be treated with capecitabine and highlight the role of biomarkers in the individualization of treatments.
The analysis published in Clinical Cancer Research shows that a newer and more accurate technology for identifying non-baseline triple-negative breast cancer, PAM50 gene expression profiling, can better define which patients benefit from capecitabine. In addition, within the non-basal group, a specific set of women whose tumors show a mesenchymal gene expression profile were detected, who benefit even more from this oral chemotherapy.
For Dr. Ana Lluch, of the GEICAM Scientific Committee and coordinator of the study in Spain, having biomarkers that help to identify which patients will benefit from the therapy and which will not is very important because it avoids overtreating them, which has an impact on their quality of life. “The GEICAM/CIBOMA study identifies, thanks to the PAM50 platform, which patients will benefit from receiving capecitabine after standard treatment, a therapy that is also oral and well tolerated, reducing the risk of relapse, which is very important because in patients with triple-negative subtype a relapse implies the start of other treatments and, consequently, a worse quality of life for them,” she says.
