🌸 Breast Cancer — 2026-W43

What this page is. Every paper the week's monitor reviewed — including the ones that did not go into the digest. Material marked “Not selected” was reviewed and deliberately left out. It has not been fact-checked to digest standard and is not endorsed. For the curated read, see the digest itself.

Phase 3 randomized noninferiority trial in women with breast cancer undergoing postmastectomy radiation with reconstruction, published in JCO. Shows hypofractionated radiation was noninferior to conventional fractionation for reconstruction complications, supporting shorter courses in this setting.

Phase 3 randomized trial in untreated stage II-III triple-negative breast cancer, published in Annals of Oncology. Adding camrelizumab to anthracycline-free docetaxel-carboplatin neoadjuvant therapy improved pathological complete response with a manageable safety profile, supporting an option that avoids anthracyclines.

Retrospective real-world molecular analysis in ESR1-mutated ER-positive metastatic breast cancer, published in Clinical Cancer Research. Suggests benefit from elacestrant differs by ESR1 variant, which may inform expectations and treatment selection for specific mutations.

Biomarker analysis of a randomized neoadjuvant trial of carboplatin added to chemotherapy in HER2-negative high-risk breast cancer, published in Clinical Cancer Research. Genomic LOH fraction may help identify who benefits from carboplatin, particularly in triple-negative disease, and was supported in an independent cohort.

Retrospective SEER-Medicare cohort of older long-term survivors of breast, prostate, colon and rectal cancer, published in J Natl Cancer Inst. Describes late second primary cancer patterns to inform survivorship surveillance, without changing systemic treatment choices.

Translational analysis of a small prospective phase 2 cohort in Clinical Cancer Research of breast cancer leptomeningeal disease treated with trastuzumab deruxtecan. CSF ctDNA reductions tracked with disease control, suggesting a monitoring tool needing larger validation.

Genomic analysis of paired and unpaired primary and metastatic breast tumors, published in Cancer Discovery. Proposes a mutability-dependent model of metastasis and latency; mechanistic with no direct treatment implications yet.

Cross-sectional study of Kenyan and Ghanaian women comparing IHC-based breast cancer subtyping with PAM50 intrinsic subtypes, published in JAMA Netw Open. Informs how reliable IHC is for guiding systemic therapy where molecular profiling is unavailable.

Retrospective deep-learning development and validation study in early breast cancer using the SCAN-B cohort, published in Clinical Cancer Research. It may help identify low-risk patients who could avoid sentinel node biopsy, but it informs surgical staging rather than systemic therapy and needs prospective validation.

Randomized phase 2 biomarker trial in high-risk women without cancer, published in Eur J Cancer, testing low-dose tamoxifen with or without lifestyle and caloric restriction interventions. Shifts surrogate biomarkers such as SHBG, but is not a validated endpoint, so it remains hypothesis-generating for prevention.

Preclinical mouse study with supporting retrospective cohorts and meta-analysis, published in Cancer Discovery, on cabergoline as chemoprevention for postpartum breast cancer. Hypothesis-generating for risk reduction in younger women, but not yet actionable for treatment.