Predicting Breast Cancer Treatment Futility with PET?

Genomic assays, circulating tumor cells, and dynamic imaging have all been proposed as ways of predicting which patients with metastatic disease will benefit from a particular therapy. In some cases, these tools have been proposed as ways to get an early indication of benefit, potentially identifying patients who may require a change of therapy before undergoing scans at the traditional 3-month intervals. However, these strategies have not offered any clear advantage.

Now, investigators have conducted a nonrandomized phase II study to test the potential of using [¹⁸F]fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET) imaging 1 week after starting therapy to predict response to anti–human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) therapy. …