New Breast Cancer Study Seeks to Optimize use of Radiotherapy in Patients with Early- Stage, Low Risk, HER2-Positive Breast Cancer
NRG-BR008, also known as the “HERO” trial, is a clinical study trying to determine if treatment with HER2-targeted therapy without radiation therapy is as good as the usual treatment of HER2-targeted therapy with radiation in patients with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer. NRG Oncology is doing this study because we want to find out if
foregoing radiation therapy is better or worse than the usual approach of providing radiationtherapy for your breast cancer. Not giving radiation therapy may avoid the potential short-termand long-term risks of radiation. It is not possible to know now if the study approach will changeyour time without disease compared to the usual approach. This study will help the study doctors learn things that will help people in the future.
If you decide to take part in this study, you will either have radiation therapy to the breast for 1-6weeks and take a HER2-targeted drug for at least six months or you will only take a HER2-targeted drug for at least six months.
Your doctor and study team will continue to follow your condition for 10 years and watch you to see if your breast cancer comes back. They will check you three months after starting the study,after the last dose of radiation if you are in the group who receives radiation, and then every six months for the next 2 years. After that, they will check you every year for 8 years. This will be done at a visit to your study doctor.
“Studying the omission of radiotherapy for this population of patients will enable many to potentially avoid the risks, costs and inconveniences of radiation,” stated Lior Braunstein, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering and lead investigator for the NRG-BR008/HERO trial. Melissa Mitchell, MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center and co-principal investigator for the study
states, “Once the most aggressive subtype of breast cancer, the revolutionary development ofHER2-targeted agents has transformed HER2-positive breast cancer into a highly curable disease. It is essential for us to examine whether our historical radiation treatments are still necessary in the era of targeted and effective drug therapy.”
For more information about the HERO Study, visit our website. https://www.nrgoncology.org/HERO Supported by grants U10CA180868 (NRG Operations), U10CA180822 (SDMC), from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the NCI National Clinical Trials Network.
About NRG Oncology
NRG Oncology conducts practice-changing, multi-institutional clinical and translational research to improve the lives of patients with cancer. Founded in 2012, NRG Oncology is a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit corporation that integrates the research of the legacy National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG), and Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) programs. The research network seeks to carry out clinical trials with emphases on gender-specific malignancies, including gynecologic, breast, and prostate cancers, and on localized or locally advanced cancers of all types. NRG Oncology’s extensive research organization comprises multidisciplinary investigators, including medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, surgeons, physicists, pathologists, and statisticians, and encompasses more than 1,300 research sites located world-wide with predominance in the United States and Canada. NRG Oncology is supported primarily through grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and is one of five research groups in the NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network.
Barbara Jacoby is an award winning blogger that has contributed her writings to multiple online publications that have touched readers worldwide.