ESMO Breast Cancer 2019: should HER2-positive breast cancer treatment de-escalation be personalized?

Photo credit: Sheheryar Kabraji, Sridhar Ramaswamy Recently presented at the ESMO Breast Cancer Congress 2019 (2–4 May, Berlin, Germany), results suggest that de-escalation approaches in the treatment of women with HER2-positive breast cancer need to be personalized.“The introduction of anti-HER2 therapies has brought a huge survival benefit in early and advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, thus there is now a need for reducing the intensity and side effects of the treatment administered,” commented Carmen Criscitiello (European Institute of Oncology, Milan, Italy). “However, the priority is to identify which patients might be spared some toxic therapies without worsening the survival benefit.” In the...