One area that is finally seeing a lot more research results of late is neo-adjuvant therapy in breast cancer, i.e. therapeutic intervention prior to surgery.

The main advantages of neo-adjuvant over adjuvant therapy are:

  1. If it works, then the therapy allows the margins to shrink prior to surgery, potentially making the tumour easier to excise
  2. If therapy works prior to surgery, you know what will likely be effective post surgery, whereas in adjuvant treatment after surgery, this is unknown.

One of the leading trials for neoadjuvant breast cancer was the ISPY2 (Investigation of Serial studies to Predict Your therapeutic response with imaging and molecular analysis 2) study.  I wrote about it in more detail at the time it was launched on Pharma Strategy Blog, if you need more information. Basically, the study is based on a complex adaptive conjoint design in neoadjuvant breast cancer, so over time, additional arms were added to the study (there were originally four) while others were removed. In this way, the investigators can find the best therapies for each tumour subtype (HER2+/1, ER+/- or triple negative) based on the responses and biomarkers.

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