ASCo report--the more things change, the more things change

[Lani]

A Swedish study looked at primary tumors and biopsied their metastases to see if ER, PR status changed

I dubbed it the"the more things change....the more things change" study

ERstatus changed + to - 27% of the time, from - to + 8% of the time
PRstatus changed + to - 38%of the time, from - to + 5 % of the time

They plotted out the survival curves (prognoses) of all four combinations of
primary vs met an found

+ primary assoctd w + met did best
- primary assoctd w +met did second best
+ primary assoctd w - met did next to worst(had 1.5 tp 2 times the risk of dying at any one point of time)
- primary assoctd wit - met did the worst

Another study showed the rates of concordance between primary tumor and mets (including her2) were

14.5% had a change of ER statys
49%had a change of PR status
14% had a change of her2 status

overall the treatments of 12%of those patients developing metatasis should have changed after biopsy

The above study looked at liver mets

her2 discordance was 3.5% + to -, __% -to +(hope the talk is on the virtual meeting as I missed that %)

I hope this encourages doctors, patients and insurance companies to come together and make biopsying mets an integral part of treatment.

It doesn't help if you have a smart bomb if the target has changed!