Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Boston, Massachusetts
Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School Director of the Program for Breast Cancer in Men, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Conquer Cancer – The ASCO Foundation
Investigating endocrine therapy treatments for men with breast cancer.
The treatment of male breast cancer, which is almost always estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, remains challenging because there is virtually no data on the optimal endocrine therapy to use in men. Dr. Leone and his team are conducting a multicenter study for men with stage 1-3 ER-/progesterone (PR)-positive HER2-negative breast cancer.
In the first phase of the study, the team will evaluate the effectiveness of tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors (AI), and AI in combination with gonadal suppression on tumor proliferation. In the second phase, the team will evaluate whether adding the CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib (Verzenio®) to either tamoxifen or AI plus gonadal suppression increases the efficacy of the treatment before surgery. During this second phase, the team will also quantify the degree of increased tumor cell death induced by endocrine therapy with and without the addition of abemaciclib. Similar studies have shown these combination therapies work well in women, and they seek to evaluate them in men with breast cancer. Dr. Leone’s Conquer Cancer research, supported by BCRF, will provide evidence for the efficacy of different endocrine therapy options for men to help with treatment decisions in this disease.
José Pablo Leone, MD is a medical oncologist and clinical investigator in the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). He serves as the Director of the Program for Breast Cancer in Men. His research focuses on brain metastases, male breast cancer and research with large databases. He received his MD from Universidad del Salvador, Argentina. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at University of Miami Jackson Memorial Hospital and went on to complete fellowships in Hematology and Medical Oncology at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He was faculty at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics from 2014 to 2017. In 2017, he joined the staff of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and DFCI, where he is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
2023
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