Titles and Affiliations
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Director, Dana-Farber Inflammatory Breast Cancer
Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation
Research Area
Developing personalized treatment approaches for patients with inflammatory breast cancer.
Impact
Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer that spreads quickly. It accounts for up to 10 percent of breast cancer deaths. No specific treatments are currently approved for IBC, and current standard therapies are not effective in every patient. For her Conquer Cancer research supported by BCRF, Dr. Lynce is leading the TRUDI study (NCT05795101), testing a new therapeutic approach to treat IBC by combining a HER2-targeted antibody-drug conjugate (trastuzumab deruxtecan, Enhertu®) with an immunotherapy agent (durvalumab, Imfinzi®). She and her team aim to identify biological markers that predict which patients are most likely to benefit, potentially leading to personalized treatment strategies.
Progress Thus Far
Dr. Lynce and her team have continued enrolling patients in the clinical trial and have now reached approximately two-thirds of their planned enrollment. The team has begun planning a series of in-depth laboratory studies on the tumor and blood samples collected during the trial, including analyzing proteins within tumors, measuring how strongly cancer cells express the treatment’s target, and studying tumor DNA and RNA in detail. Together, these analyses are designed to help the team understand how the treatment works, identify which patients are most likely to benefit, and uncover why some tumors become resistant over time.
What’s Next
Dr. Lynce will collect blood and tumor samples at multiple points during the study, to investigate how and why some patients improve after treatment, while others develop resistance. Together, these analyses aim to characterize the molecular features of IBC in unprecedented detail and reveal important insights into how tumors respond and adapt to therapy over time. The team hopes this work will not only evaluate a promising new treatment option for IBC but also generate knowledge that helps guide the development of more personalized therapies in the future.
Biography
Filipa Lynce, MD received her medical degree from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal in 2004. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Hematology and Medical Oncology at MedStar Washington Hospital Center/MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. From 2015 to 2020, she served on the faculty at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, where she was the Institutional Principal Investigator (PI) for the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and the co-PI of the National Capital Area NCORP. In 2020, Dr. Lynce joined the staff of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she is a medical oncologist and clinical investigator in the Breast Oncology Center. She also serves as Director of the Inflammatory Breast Cancer Program and is a member of the Center for BRCA and Related Genes. Her research focuses on inflammatory breast cancer, triple-negative breast cancer, BRCA-associated breast cancers and the development of novel therapies for breast cancer treatment.
