Perlmutter Cancer Center Medical Oncologist Drives Innovative Breast Cancer Clinical Trials | News

New York, February 23, 2022 / PRNewswire /-Dr. Nancy Chan, MD, Breast cancerParticipated in NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center of September 2021 After spending seven years at the Rutgers Cancer Institute as a co-leader in breast oncology. Dr. Chan Currently examining a patient at Perlmutter Cancer Center—34th Street Is part of Breast Cancer Center.. As director of breast cancer clinical research at the Perlmutter Cancer Center, she brings the clinical knowledge she has learned from patients to her colleagues who are developing new ways to understand and manage breast cancer.

Dr. Chan discusses her new role at the Perlmutter Cancer Center, her clinical trials, and more.

What is your role as a principal clinical researcher for breast cancer?

One of the most important aspects of my role as a director of breast cancer clinical research is to ensure that we always have a dynamic flow. Clinical trials It can be applied to our very diverse patient population. These include trials in early and metastatic settings, as well as in maintenance settings for female cancer survivors, as there are clinical trials aimed at improving quality of life. These trials cover everything that a person with breast cancer can think of, including the management of side effects.

Every day, pharmaceutical companies or co-operative groups seek clinical trial opportunities. There are various exams that we can open. My job is to select and curate clinical trials that are optimal for the patient population and make it easier for patients to participate in the trial.

There are several studies conducted nationwide, especially at major cancer centers, to find out why less than 10% of patients participate in clinical trials. My job is also to dispel some of the stigmas surrounding clinical trial enrollment. For example, people may think that clinical trials are the end of their path, or that they are being used as guinea pigs. It’s also scary to be assigned to a test placebo arm. We spend a lot of time in the clinic talking to patients and getting rid of some of them.

How do you choose clinical trials that meet the diverse patient populations offered by the Perlmutter Cancer Center?

NYC Health + Hospitals / Bellevue is probably as diverse as you can get, and the patient population there is very different from NYU Langone Health and other sites in related networks. In Bellevue, we often see many different and very interesting medical conditions that require us to do a lot to access care. Patients with late-stage cancer are coming. We would like to make sure that our clinical trial portfolio covers those patients as well.

People come from all over the world to seek care at the Bellevue and Pearl Matter Cancer Centers.I made many telemedicine visits with patients far away Europe And that Caribbean The person you are looking for New York City Perlmutter Cancer Center as a hub for advanced cancer treatment. Each of these patients is diverse in different ways, and our clinical trials need to cover the entire population we serve.

You have a special interest in Phase 1 clinical trials. What is their importance in treating people with breast cancer?

Another hat I’m wearing is a member of the new treatment team at the Perlmutter Cancer Center.

We can generally provide breast cancer patients with a quality life and can provide them in different cases over the years. Breast cancer types vary, and in metastatic situations, there are patients with multiple treatment histories.

For those patients, our goal is clearly to find an effective treatment for them. Because they have metastatic disease, they always need some treatment, but in many trials they are treated with more than 4-5 lines, which is a qualified cutoff, so in breast cancer-specific trials. Often excluded. So what do we have to offer to patients who are still really in good shape, have a good quality of life, and are receiving a ninth treatment? It is these patients that we look to in Phase 1 trials.

When screening patients for breast cancer trials, Phase 1 trials may have specific tumor mutations in the patient, if possible, even if they have not received 8 or 9 lines of treatment. Is in mind. Matching the mutation to a specific target drug may cause the patient to respond, even if it is not a breast cancer-specific clinical trial, because it is being treated according to the underlying genomic biology. It provides patients with another way for early access to potentially effective medicines.

of Long island And BrooklynWe are expanding our Breast Cancer Research Program. NYU Langone Hospital — Long Island When NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn It’s a very robust site. And now there are Phase 1 clinical trials targeting other tumor subtypes as well as breast cancer patients.These other clinical trials are very important as they provide access to patients who would otherwise have to travel. Manhattan To gain access to these studies.

What are some of the clinical trials you are conducting?

I am very fortunate to be one of the collaborators in the next study coordinated by the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP), the early drug development arm of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). I did. This is a very interesting study. Radium-223 containing paclitaxel, the standard of care chemotherapeutic agent, Commonly used to treat breast cancer. Radium-223 is a radium isotope that emits alpha particles that are unique to cancer patients who have metastasized to bone. In essence, this is a clinical trial that combines bone-targeted drugs with systemic chemotherapy to enhance antitumor effects. Paclitaxel also targets breast cancer outside the bone. Therefore, this may be a useful combination for people with multiple diseased sites throughout the body. This study is open to the public and is currently being conducted at multiple NCI-designated cancer centers nationwide.

There is another study that is part of the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium. Pembrolizumab in combination with fulvestrant For the treatment of hormone-positive breast cancer. The more widely used immunotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer has not been generally studied in hormone-positive breast cancer. The majority of our patients have hormone-positive breast cancer in both early and metastatic situations. This is an area we would like to investigate to understand which patients respond to immunotherapy. At a poster session at the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, I presented a study initiated by researchers.

I presented another researcher-led trial in a poster session on a recently completed study. It concluded that the four cycles of neoadjuvant liposomes doxorubicin and carboplatin were found to be as effective as the standard chemotherapy regimen but less toxic.

What should people expect when receiving care at the Perlmutter Cancer Center?

When I think of the different hats I wear at work, the patient care part of it is very important. I love knowing about patients as well as breast cancer history and diagnostic methods. I take very good notes about who they are and what they are doing, as well as how they were diagnosed. I ask them about their family and what is important to them. What is related to what is happening in their lives? I found that when you give patients time and dig deeper into who they are, they are really open to you.

For example, I met a young patient who just started telling me a story about her Breast cancer diagnosis She told me that she didn’t reveal to anyone about the history of her family. Her close family died of breast cancer a year ago, which caused a lot of trauma. The patient’s diagnosis of breast cancer is traumatic enough, but experiencing breast cancer with relatives is devastating. And this patient put the burden on her through her own diagnosis of cancer. It’s just one example of getting to know people.

Together with my patient, we come up with a treatment plan together, take all the information we have from breast cancer (from pathology and their medical history) and incorporate it into the person they are. That’s what I want to do and it’s really important. Because it makes people feel that you really care. At the Perlmutter Cancer Center, this is what my colleague saw. The way we approach people with breast cancer is not just for breast cancer, but for the whole person.

contact address:

Ryan Ziuba

212-404-4131

[email protected]

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Source NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center