Titles and Affiliations
Associate Professor
School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Conquer Cancer – The ASCO Foundation
Research area
Optimizing treatments for patients with triple-negative breast cancer.
Impact
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. While combining immunotherapy with chemotherapy before surgery has improved responses and reduced recurrence, the current treatment regimen can cause severe side effects and does not benefit all patients. For this reason, there is a need to assess tumor response early in treatment so that adjustments can be made to the therapy. Emerging evidence suggests that FDG-PET imaging and the presence or absence of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) may predict which patients will experience a pathologic complete response (pCR), showing no signs of cancer at surgery, following neoadjuvant therapy.
Progress Thus Far
For his Conquer Cancer Award supported by BCRF, Dr. Santa-Maria has completed enrollment of the first 30 patients in the NeoADAPT trial (NCT06245889), a study designed to personalize treatment for patients with stage II and III TNBC by adapting therapy based on how each patient’s cancer responds to neoadjuvant therapy. In the trial’s first planned analysis, 80 percent of patients achieved a pathologic complete response, and half of patients were able to safely avoid a class of chemotherapy drugs known for particularly severe side effects, without compromising how well the treatment worked.
What’s next
Dr. Santa-Maria’s trial will continue to serve as a platform for tissue, blood, and imaging analysis to help identify which patients respond best to therapy. He and his team will continue collecting samples and information as the trial progresses, with the goal of reducing unnecessary treatment and associated side effects while improving outcomes for patients with triple-negative breast cancer.
Biography
Cesar Santa-Maria, MD, MS is a clinical translational researcher with nationally recognized expertise in breast cancer immunotherapy and immune biomarkers. His main research interest is in developing novel immunotherapy-based strategies and multi-platform biomarker development to identify responders to novel immune-based therapies and to understand disease biology and resistance mechanism. Early on in his career he received an NCI K08 grant (K08CA237863) to study breast cancer immunotherapy and has since obtained diverse funding for his research in breast cancer immunotherapy (NIH, DOD, AVON, BCRF, institutional, etc). He has published original research and written reviews and practice algorithms on breast cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Santa-Maria conducts several investigator-initiated, collaborative group- and industry-sponsored clinical trials in breast cancer immunotherapy. He collaborates broadly with other investigators at a national level through various research consortiums (TBCRC, ETCTN, NCTN) on translational research in breast cancer where he also holds leadership positions (TBCRC Diversity Task Force Co-Chair, ETCTN Hopkins LAO Breast CoChair). As a nationally recognized leader in breast cancer immunotherapy, he has appointments in the NCTN Breast Immuno-oncology Task Force, NCCN Breast Cancer Panel, and Steering Committees (i.e. OPTIMICE-RD).
