Abstract:
The enormous number of new biological agents aligned with the large investment that is required for their registration is a major challenge for clinical oncology and the pharmaceutical industry. The neoadjuvant scenario is seen as a means of prioritizing drugs for clinical development and is increasingly being exploited for this purpose. The waiting period to surgery for operable breast cancer represents a valuable “window of opportunity” to evaluate novel therapeutic strategies and provide insight into their biological effects in patients who have their cancers intact and are not pretreated. As these trials occur in the waiting period of patients who already have surgery planned as their primary therapy; they are considered incidental, and occur without delay or interference of the patient’s primary, standard of care treatment. Interventional studies performed during this period of a few weeks require significant multidisciplinary collaboration to overcome logistical hurdles. We demonstrate in this session the feasibility and success of conducting several window of opportunity at our cancer center.
