Tumour Biology vs Tumour Stage in NATALEE-Eligible Patients

In this video, Prof François Duhoux (Cliniques Universitaires St.-Luc, Brussels) meets up with Dr Rik Van Severen (University Hospitals Leuven) to discuss the results of a retrospective study looking into the risk of recurrence among patients with NATALEE eligible pT2N0 hormone-receptor positive, HER2-negative (HR+/HER2-) early breast cancer. This retrospective analysis included a total of 711 NATALEE eligible pT2N0 patients and 1902 pT1-2N1 patients. Baseline patient and disease characteristics were well balanced between the two groups, although the proportions of patients who received (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy were higher in the pT1-2N1 group (49.2% and 94.7% vs. 42.4% and 76.7% in the pT2N0 group). Surprisingly, the distant disease-free survival, the invasive disease-free survival and the breast-cancer specific survival were all numerically worse in the NATALEE eligible high risk pT2N0 population than what was observed in the group of patients with pT1-2N1 tumours. As such, these findings suggest that tumour biology may have a more important prognostic value than the tumour stage in HR-positive HER2 negative early-stage breast cancer.