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Early Clinical Response Correlation to Pathologic Outcome for Treatment in Patients with Invasive Breast Cancer Undergoing Chemotherapy Before Surgery

Trial Status: active

This phase II trial evaluates whether clinical tumor measurements (measurements of the breast tumor obtained by imaging or clinical exam) can be used to predict the amount of tumor remaining at the time of surgery for treating patients with invasive breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy before surgery (neoadjuvant). Neoadjuvant therapy, also called preoperative therapy, is treatment that is given prior to surgery and has become an important part of standard management of certain subtypes and clinical stages of breast cancer. It has been long established that patients who achieve pathologic complete response (pCR) after receiving neoadjuvant treatment have better outcomes than those who don’t, especially in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), HER2 positive (+), and aggressive estrogen receptors (ER)+ breast cancer. So far, the only way to discern whether a patient achieved pCR is to give them the full course of therapy and then proceed to surgery. One of the areas that has attracted significant research interest has been the effort to develop early predictors of pCR. This way, treatment can be tailored in the future to each patient and each tumor to spare patients from ineffective therapy. Some of these predictors are biomarkers, which are biological molecules found in blood, other body fluids, or tissues as well as imaging markers that can be a sign of a normal or abnormal process, or of a condition or disease to be used to see how well the body responds to a treatment for a disease or condition. This study may help researchers learn whether tumor specimens and imaging scans done prior to treatment can be used to predict the amount of tumor remaining at the time of surgery for patients with invasive breast cancer undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy.