Study Results Show Shorter Radiation for Breast Cancer is ‘Worthy of Further Study’

Optimizing the dose and fractionation regimen are some of the next steps in further developing postmastectomy radiation therapy in breast cancer, according to an expert from Mayo Clinic.

During the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), CancerNetwork^® spoke with Robert Mutter, MD, a member of Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Rochester, Minnesota, about future research for postmastectomy radiotherapy in the treatment of patients with breast cancer.

According to Mutter, future research in the field includes the RT CHARM trial (NCT03414970), which is evaluating photon postmastectomy radiation among patients who have undergone an immediate breast reconstruction.

Transcript:

There is an ongoing photon postmastectomy radiation trial for patients who have an immediate [breast] reconstruction. This is called the RT CHARM trial, and it’s actually completed accrual, so we’re eagerly awaiting those results, which should be sometime in late 2023, or 2024.

Our results suggest that hypofractionated proton postmastectomy radiation therapy is also worthy of further study. Certainly, there’s also a great interest in further optimizing the dose and fractionation regimen for postmastectomy radiation therapy, in particular, for patients with immediate reconstruction. These are patients who still have relatively high rates of complications whether they’re treated with photons, or, as we’ve seen in our study, with proton therapy because we observed similar rates of complications as what has been reported in the literature with photons.

Reference

Mutter R, Giri S, Fruth B, et al. Phase II randomized trial of conventional versus hypofractionated post-mastectomy proton radiotherapy. Presented at the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; December 6-10, 2022; San Antonio, TX. Abstract GS4-05.