Shom Goel, MD, PhD, shares the latest research in treatment resistance for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer. This presentation was originally given as part of the 2015 Metastatic Breast Cancer Forum, held at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Mass. on Oct. 17, 2015. Learn more at http://www.susanfsmith.org

1. Treatment resistance in HER2-
positive breast cancer
Shom Goel MD PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, MA

2. Treatment resistance in HER2-
positive breast cancer
Shom Goel MD PhD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, MA
My Lab My clinic

3. Outline
1. What is treatment resistance?
2. What causes it?
3. How can we study it?
4. What have we learned?

4. What is treatment resistance?
Resistance in metastatic breast cancerResistance in early breast cancer

5. Drug resistance provokes obvious
questions
• Why is this drug not working?
• How can we make it work better?
• If cancer cells have become resistant to drug
X, is there a particular drug that we should try
next?

6. What is treatment resistance?
Resistance in metastatic breast cancerResistance in early breast cancer
Overcoming Resistance
1. Make MBC a chronic disease
2. Cure MBC
Overcoming Resistance
1. Prevent MBC from developing

7. What causes treatment resistance?
De novo resistance Acquired resistance
Growing in certain locationsTumor heterogeneity
Turning off the immune systemChanges in “cell signaling”

8. How can we study treatment resistance?
In cells In mice
In our patients
• Information from clinical trials
• Biopsies of drug resistant tumors

9. What are we learning?
New drugs in development
• PI3-kinase inhibitors
• CDK4/6 inhibitors
• New HER2 inhibitors
• mTOR inhibitors
• Antibody-drug conjugates
• Immune therapies