The Emerging Role of Immunotherapy in Breast Cancer

Rita Nanda, MD: So the role of immunotherapy has really evolved this year, for both advanced-stage disease and hopefully for early-stage disease in the not-too-distant future. I think immunotherapy has certainly arrived for breast cancer. We saw our first approval advanced PDL-1+, triple-negative breast cancer earlier this year with the approval of atezolizumab and Nab-paclitaxel, based on the IMpassion130 trial. So there are a number of other trials going on that are helping us understand how better to sequence immunotherapy with chemotherapy; are there different chemotherapy backbones that might be as effective or more effective than nab-paclitaxel in any particular situation; as well as combination trials that are ongoing that hopefully will enhance and boost the number of patients who can benefit from immunotherapy in patients with advanced-stage disease.