Titles and Affiliations
Attending Physician, Breast Medical Oncology
Assistant Professor,
Harvard Medical School
Research area
Developing novel therapeutic approaches for breast cancer with chest wall disease.
Impact
Breast cancer with chest wall disease is a challenging presentation of breast cancer that has a poor response to currently available therapies, and is often complicated by pain, ulceration, bleeding, and distant metastases. Since this form of breast cancer has a poor overall survival, developing novel therapeutic approaches to treat it is a major unmet need. Dr. Vidula and colleagues are conducting a clinical trial to test a novel immunotherapy/chemotherapy combination compared to chemotherapy alone in patients with this disease. The results may support the combination as a potential new therapeutic option for these patients. In related work, Dr. Vidula will examine the gene expression patterns in chest wall metastases to identify pathways expressed in this disease that may be therapeutically targeted in future clinical trials
Progress Thus Far
In preliminary studies, Dr. Vidula and her team analyzed liquid biopsies from patients with MBC for tumor BRCA mutations. They found BRCA mutations in 13.5 percent of tumor samples, largely in the absence of inherited BRCA mutations. Based on these findings, she and her team activated a clinical trial (NCT03990896) at Massachusetts General Hospital. In the past year, the trial also began enrolling at the University of California, San Francisco, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Emory University.
What’s next
Dr. Vidula and colleagues will analyze and correlate clinical, and biomarker data obtained from the trial exploring immunotherapy plus chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone in patients with breast cancer and chest wall disease. Specifically, they will determine whether immunotherapy added to chemotherapy is more beneficial than chemotherapy alone in these patients. The team will also study changes in tumor tissue immune composition, circulating tumor cells, and cell-free DNA and determine how they change in response to the combination therapy versus chemotherapy alone. Other studies will focus on RNA sequencing of chest wall metastases from patients with this disease to understand gene expression and identify pathways that may be therapeutically targeted.
Biography
Neelima Vidula, MD is a breast medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. Dr. Vidulacompleted medical school and residency in internal medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL., and a clinical and research fellowship in hematology and medical oncology at the University of California San Francisco in San Francisco, CA.
Dr. Vidula is the principal investigator of many early phase clinical trials studying novel agents for patients with breast cancer. As part of the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium, she leads several national investigator-initiated clinical trials exploring immunotherapy and chemotherapy for breast cancer with chest wall disease. She developed the Breast Cancer with Chest Wall Disease Comprehensive Program at MGH, which involves a multidisciplinary clinic for patients with chest wall disease, as well as an accompanying clinical and translational research program. Dr. Vidula is also the lead on another investigator-initiated clinical trial evaluating a PARP inhibitor in somatic BRCA mutant metastatic breast cancer, funded by a prior Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO – Breast Cancer Research Foundation – Career Development Award and Pfizer ASPIRE award. Dr. Vidula also performs clinical research evaluating the impact of biomarkers on therapy response and patient outcomes, and conducts research in precision medicine using cell-free DNA and tumor tissue genotyping. She has presented her research at several national and international meetings, and published many articles in high-impact journals.
