SABCS 2020: update on triple-negative and metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer.

One year into the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) was another large congress held in a virtual format. Despite these circumstances, clinically relevant data were presented, and this short review focuses on developments in the fields of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer. A quality-of-life (QoL) analysis from IMPassion031 showed that adding atezolizumab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy was not associated with a detrimental effect on QoL, while the burden of treatment-induced side effects increased with each cycle of neoadjuvant therapy in both treatment arms. KEYNOTE-355 evaluated the addition of pembrolizumab to chemotherapy as first-line treatment in metastatic TNBC (mTNBC); a significant improvement of progression-free survival (PFS) was reported in the pembrolizumab arm. At the 2020 SABCS, results with respect to different chemotherapy backbones were reported and the benefit of pembrolizumab was maintained irrespective of the type of taxane. Disappointingly, the phase III IPATunity130 study could not confirm a PFS improvement with the AKT inhibitor ipatasertib when added to paclitaxel as first-line treatment in mTNBC. A biomarker analysis from the phase III ASCENT study showed that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan was superior to chemotherapy by investigator's choice independent of Trop‑2 expression and