There’s good news for a difficult to treat breast cancer, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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So called triple negative breast cancer is associated with increased rates of spread, recurrence and death than other forms, but now long term results of a clinical trial offer better odds against this disease, William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, reveals.

Nelson: They did a randomized trial where they gave pembrolizumab, which is an immune checkpoint inhibitor along with chemotherapy before surgery, the women underwent surgery and that had pembrolizumab after surgery versus just having the chemotherapy given before surgery and there was a benefit. If you get out to five years overall survival at five years was 86-87% when pembrolizumab was added versus 81-82% when it was not.  :29

Nelson says as breast cancer is becoming better characterized on molecular and genetic bases, treatments should continue to be more targeted and more effective. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.