Hello Health Rounds readers! Today we highlight several more studies with positive implications for cancer patients that were presented at the recent European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) meeting in Berlin.

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A newer class of cancer drugs can delay disease progression or extend survival for breast cancer patients, multiple teams of researchers reported at the ESMO meeting.

The treatments, known as antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, combine a targeted antibody with a chemotherapy drug.

In the ASCENT-03 trial, researchers tested Gilead Sciences' ADC Trodelvy in patients with untreated locally advanced or inoperable cases of aggressive triple-negative breast cancer who were not candidates for treatment with immunotherapy drugs such as Merck’s Keytruda.

Trodelvy combines the cancer-cell-targeting antibody sacituzumab with the chemotherapy drug SN-38.

With half of the 558 study participants followed for at least 13 months, those receiving Trodelvy had a median progression-free survival, or the time before the cancer began to worsen, of 9.7 months, compared to 6.9 months for those treated with standard chemotherapy, according to a report of the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Earlier this year, study leader Dr. Sara Tolaney of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston presented results of a related trial that showed Trodelvy also adds a benefit when such patients do meet criteria for immunotherapy treatment.

Separately, researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York reported on Daiichi Sankyo’s Datroway, a combination of the antibody datapotamab and the chemotherapy drug deruxtecan, in patients with previously untreated advanced triple-negative breast cancer for whom immunotherapy was similarly not an option.

Among the 644 patients in the TROPION-Breast 02 trial, median overall survival was about 24 months with Datroway versus 19 months with standard chemotherapy, researchers reported.

Median PFS was about 11 months with Datroway and 6 months for standard chemo.

Meanwhile, two additional studies showed that ADCs can dramatically improve outcomes not only when the disease has already progressed, but also in patients with earlier-stage disease.

In patients with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer in the DESTINY-Breast 05 and the DESTINY-Breast 11 trials, preoperative treatment with Enhertu from Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca – a combination of the antibody trastuzumab and the chemo drug deruxtecan - improved disease-free survival compared with standard therapy.

A simple blood test could change how doctors decide who needs chemotherapy, and how intensive it should be, in patients with colon or bladder cancer, according to study results presented at the ESMO meeting.

More than 1,000 people with stage 3 colon cancer in one study had blood taken about six weeks after surgery to remove the tumor.

If tiny fragments of cancer DNA in the bloodstream, known as circulating tumor DNA, were not detected, patients were considered ‘low-risk.’ If ctDNA was present, they were deemed ‘high-risk.’

The intensity of their treatment was then guided by their ctDNA results, according to a report of the study published in Nature Medicine.

Low-risk patients were able to receive less chemotherapy, leading to fewer hospitalizations and a reduction in side-effects such as nerve