Paclitaxel + Trastuzumab + Pertuzumab as Pre-Op for Inflammatory BrCa

Phase II Trial of Paclitaxel Combined With Trastuzumab and Pertuzumab as Pre-Operative Therapy for Inflammatory Breast Cancer

This research study is a Phase II clinical trial, which tests the safety and effectiveness of an investigational drug to learn whether the drug works in treating a specific cancer. In this study, paclitaxel and trastuzumab are being combined with pertuzumab which is "investigational" for the preoperative treatment of inflammatory breast cancer. Trastuzumab is given for a total of 12 months for the treatment of HER2 positive breast cancer. This study also adds pertuzumab to trastuzumab so that both drugs are given for a total of 12 months; this combination is also "investigational".

"Investigational" means that pertuzumab is being studied. It also means that although the FDA has approved pertuzumab for preoperative use to treat breast cancer, it has not been thoroughly studied in combination with paclitaxel and trastuzumab for preoperative treatment of inflammatory breast cancer. It has been FDA approved for specific use in advanced breast cancer that is HER2 positive.

Pertuzumab is an antibody, which is a protein that attacks a foreign substance is the body. Pertuzumab blocks the function of the HER2 protein like trastuzumab does. However, pertuzumab binds to a different part of the HER2 receptor and stops cancer cells from growing. This drug has been used in the treatment of advanced breast cancer that is HER2 positive, and has been combined with trastuzumab and chemotherapy in those studies. Information from those other research studies suggests that pertuzumab may help to kill the cancer cells in the breast and enable you to undergo a mastectomy. The addition of pertuzumab may also help reduce the chance of cancer recurrence.

In this research study, we are combining pertuzumab with paclitaxel and trastuzumab as preoperative therapy and will determine the response of the cancer remaining in the breast at the time of mastectomy. In addition, we are combining trastuzumab with pertuzumab for a total of 12 months and we are looking to see whether the combination reduces the chance that the cancer will return.

Another goal of this research study is to determine whether we can develop a way to identify tumors that will respond well to this study treatment. We will do research tests on your tumor tissue before, during and after study treatment. These tests may help doctors understand how the study treatment may work to treat your type of breast cancer. In the future, these tests may help us find ways to help match patients with the drugs most likely to work against their specific tumors before treatment begins.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Breast Cancer
• Intervention / Treatment: Drug: Cyclophosphamide; Drug: Doxorubicin; Drug: Paclitaxel; Drug: Pertuzumab; Drug: Trastuzumab; Radiation: Radiation Therapy; Procedure: Mastectomy

Detailed Description

If you agree to take part in this study we will ask you to undergo some screening tests and procedures to confirm that you are eligible. Many of these tests and procedures are likely to be part of regular cancer care and may be done even if it turns out that you do not take part in the research study. If you have had some of these tests or procedures recently, they may or may not have to be repeated. The screening process will include the following: a medical history, performance status, physical examination, scans and x-rays, blood samples, blood pregnancy test, electrocardiogram, echocardiogram. If these tests show that you are eligible to participate in the research study, you will begin the study treatment. If you do not meet the eligibility criteria you will not be able to participate in this research study.

Before beginning study treatment you will undergo a tumor biopsy and have photographs of your tumor taken to assess the response of your tumor to the study treatment.

On the first day of study treatment (Week 1, Day 1) with trastuzumab and pertuzumab, you will receive an intravenous infusion of trastuzumab over about 90 minutes, followed by a 60 minutes observation period. If the trastuzumab infusion is tolerated, you will receive the rest of your study treatment, the pertuzumab. This will also be given as an intravenous infusion over about 60 minutes with you being observed for a further 60 minutes. Thus, the total duration of infusion and observation periods for the first dose of study treatment (Week 1, Day 1) is about 5 hours. If the drugs are well tolerated at Week 1, the duration of the infusion with trastuzumab and pertuzumab may be shortened for subsequent doses.

Prior to starting Week 2, you will undergo a second research biopsy of your breast. The biopsy will be performed either prior to Week 2, Day 8 or on the same day. You will then receive an infusion of trastuzumab and begin chemotherapy. If the infusion of trastuzumab was tolerated on Week 1, Day 1, then the infusion time is reduced to about 30 minutes. You will then be pre-medicated with drugs to reduce the chance of having a sensitivity reaction to paclitaxel. This takes approximately 30 minutes. The paclitaxel is give by intravenous infusion over about 60 minutes. If you tolerate the paclitaxel infusions, then the pre-medication can be changed by your doctor.

The pertuzumab is given every 3 weeks beginning on Week 1 and continues until paclitaxel administration is complete. Trastuzumab is given weekly beginning on Week 1 and continues until paclitaxel administration is complete. Paclitaxel is given weekly for a total of 16 doses beginning on Week 2. After completing 16 doses of paclitaxel, trastuzumab and pertuzumab may be continued every 3 weeks until surgery.

Study treatment visits will occur at regular intervals during the period of study treatment, beginning on Week 1. During these study treatment visits the following will be done: physical exam, performance status, blood samples, heart function tests.

After completing 16 doses of paclitaxel in combination with pertuzumab and trastuzumab, you will undergo surgery for removal of your breast cancer. This will occur approximately 4-5 weeks after your last paclitaxel infusion. Prior to surgery, you will have the following assessments: a repeat breast MRI, PET scan (if necessary), physical exam, vital signs, performance status, blood tests, tumor tissue tests.

Approximately 4-5 weeks after surgery, when you are well-healed, you will have two options for treatment (at your physician's discretion):

Option 1: Doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide (AC), every 2-3 weeks x 4 cycles. This is standard chemotherapy for IBC. Followed by trastuzumab and pertuzumab every 3 weeks to complete 12 months of HER2-directed therapy.

Option 2: Continue trastuzumab and pertuzumab every 3 weeks to complete 12 months of HER2-directed therapy.

Doxorubicin is given by vein over about 5-10 minutes. This is followed by cyclophosphamide by vein given about 30 minutes. Anti-nausea medicine is given first under the direction of your doctor.

Approximately 4-5 weeks after finishing the AC treatment if you pursue Option 1 (or 4-5 weeks after surgery if you pursue Option 2), you will receive radiation therapy to the mastectomy site and the surrounding lymph nodes. This will be given daily, Monday through Friday for approximately 6-7 weeks. This will be administered as standard of care for IBC.

Approximately 3-4 weeks following the completion of AC if you pursue Option 1 (or 3-4 weeks after surgery if you pursue Option 2), you will begin maintenance therapy with trastuzumab and pertuzumab. As with Week 1, Day 1, you will receive an intravenous infusion of trastuzumab over about 90 minutes followed by a 60 minute observation period. If the trastuzumab infusion is tolerated, you will receive the rest of your study treatment, the pertuzumab. This will also be given as an intravenous infusion over about 60 minutes with your being observed for a further 60 minutes. Thus, the total duration of infusion and observation periods for the first day of maintenance study treatment is about 5 hours. If the study drugs are well tolerated, the duration of the infusion with trastuzumab and pertuzumab may be shortened for subsequent doses. Both trastuzumab and pertuzumab will be given every 3 weeks to complete a 12 month duration of HER2-directed therapy. Every 9 weeks (every third dose of trastuzumab and pertuzumab) you will undergo the same procedure as taht described above in Study Treatment visits.

About one month after your last dose of study treatment, you will be asked to return to the clinic. At this visit tests will be done to check your physical condition and to check that you have recovered from any side effects of study treatment. During this visit the following will be done: physical exam, vital signs, performance status and blood tests.

You will be asked to attend regular follow up visits to check if you are experiencing any long term side effects and to check taht the cancer has not come back. We plan to follow participants for up to 13 years after the start of teh study. During these visits the following will be done: physical exam and questions about your health/medications you have taken (every 3 months for the first year, every 6 months for the next 4 years, yearly until the end of study follow up); blood draws (every 6 months for the first 4 years, yearly after that); mammograms will be performed annually, other scans may be performed as needed.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 23
• Phase: Phase 2

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Massachusetts
    • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02215
      • Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
    • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02215
      • Brigham and Women's Hospital
  • Michigan
    • Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, 48109
      • University of Michigan

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Histologically confirmed invasive breast cancer
• HER2 positive breast cancer
• Clinical diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer
• Without evidence of visceral or bone involvement with metastatic cancer on physical exam or any diagnostic study. Extensive nodal involvement is allowed
• Willingness to undergo a research biopsy of the affected breast

Exclusion Criteria:

• Prior therapy for the treatment of breast cancer
• Receiving any other investigational or commercial agents or therapies
• Known brain metastases
• Symptomatic intrinsic lung disease or extensive tumor involvement of the lungs resulting in dyspnea at rest
• History of allergic reactions attributed to compounds of similar chemical or biologic composition to paclitaxel, trastuzumab, pertuzumab
• Uncontrolled intercurrent illness
• Pregnant or breastfeeding
• History of a different malignancy except for the following circumstances: disease-free for at least 5 years and at low risk of recurrence, or cervical cancer in situ or basal or squamous cell carcinoma of the skin
• HIV positive on combination anti-retroviral therapy

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm

Intervention / Treatment

Experimental: Treatment Arm; Run in: Trastuzumab IV 4 mg/kg, Pertuzumab IV 840 mg (Day 1 Week 1) Pre-Op: Trastuzumab IV 2 mg/kg weekly, Paclitaxel 80 mg/m2 IV weekly (beginning on Day 8 Week 2) x 16 doses. Starting Day 21 (week 4) continue trastuzumab and paclitaxel as above, add Pertuzumab 420 mg IV x 3 weeks. After completing 16 doses of Paclitaxel, Trastuzumab (6 mg/kg IV) and Pertuzumab 420 mg IV may be continued x 3 weeks until surgery Modified Radical Mastectomy Post-Op: Option 1: Adriamycin 60 mg/m2 IV and Cyclophosphamide 600 mg/m2 IV x 2-3 weeks x 4 cycles. Followed by Trastuzumab 8 mg/kg and Pertuzumab 840 IV load; followed by Trastuzumab 6 mg/kg every and Pertuzumab 420 mg IV every 3 weeks to complete 12 months of HER2-directed therapy Option 2: Continue Trastuzumab 6 mg/kg and Pertuzumab 420 mg x 3 weeks to complete 12 months of HER2-directed therapy Post-mastectomy radiation to the chest wall / regional lymph nodes and endocrine therapy by standard of care.

Drug: Cyclophosphamide; Drug: Doxorubicin; Drug: Paclitaxel; Drug: Pertuzumab; Drug: Trastuzumab; Radiation: Radiation Therapy; Procedure: Mastectomy

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Percentages of Participants With Pathologic Complete Response	Pathologic complete response (pCR) is defined as absence of invasive carcinoma within the breast and axillary lymph nodes following preoperative treatment. Participants whose disease is not surgically resectable following preoperative treatment are considered as not having pCR.	18 weeks
Residual Cancer Burden Rate	Residual cancer burden is calculated an then categorized based on the methods described in the following: Symmans WF, Peintinger F, Hatzis C, et al. Measurement of residual breast cancer burden to predict survival after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. J Clin Oncol 2007;25(28): 4414-22. This method uses tumor size, the proportion of that tumor that is invasive carcinoma, the number of axillary lymph nodes containing metastatic carcinoma and the diameter of the largest metastasis in an axillary lymph node. These parameters are combined in a formula that outputs a RCB index. This index is divided into 4 categories: RCB-0, RCB-I, RCB-II, and RCB-III. The previous categories are in order of increasing severity of RCB.	18 Weeks

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of Participants With Congestive Heart Failure	Number of participants with clinically significant congestive heart failure (CHF) as determined by established medical practices.	1 year and 8 months
Median Disease Free Survival	Disease-free survival (DFS) is defined for the participants who undergo surgery, as the duration of time from surgery until ipsilateral local-regional, contralateral or distant invasive recurrence or death from any cause; in the absence of an event, DFS will be censored at the date last know alive and free from recurrence.	63 months
Median Time to Treatment Failure	Time to treatment failure (TTF) will be defined among all participants, as the duration of time from treatment initiation to a DFS event or progressive disease during preoperative therapy or treatment disease that is not surgically resectable; in the absence of an event, TTF will be censored at the date last know alive and free from recurrence or progression.	63 months
Median Overall Survival	Overall survival (OS) will be defined among all participants, as the duration of time from treatment initiation to death from any cause, or is censored at date last known alive. Post-surgery OS will be defined among the participants who undergo surgery, as the duration of time from treatment initiation to death from any cause, or is censored at date last known alive.	63 months
Pathological Complete Response Rate by Intrinsic Subtype	Pathologic complete response (pCR) is defined as absence of invasive carcinoma within the breast and axillary lymph nodes following preoperative treatment. Participants whose disease is not surgically resectable following preoperative treatment are considered as not having pCR. PAM50 analysis was performed on the biopsy specimen taken on day 1. Participants' pCR was tabulated according to the intrinsic subtype and the association of intrinsic subtype (Estrogen receptor 2 - enriched vs. other) with pCR was assessed using Fisher's exact test.	18 Weeks
Residual Disease Rate by Intrinsic Subtype	Residual Disease Rate is the percentage of participants who do not achieve Pathologic complete response (pCR) by the end of preoperative treatment. pCR is defined as absence of invasive carcinoma within the breast and axillary lymph nodes following preoperative treatment. Residual disease within the breast at time of mastectomy was assessed by microarray analysis. Residual disease rate was reported by intrinsic subtype identified using day 1 RNAseq analysis.	18 Weeks
Predictive Accuracy Rate of Pre-Treatment Versus On-Treatment Tumor Biopsy RNA Sequencing Profiles	Tumor RNA expression from pre-treatment (Day 1) and on-treatment (Day 8) biopsies were evaluated to see if the expression profiles had predictive accuracy of pCR. pCR is defined as absence of invasive carcinoma within the breast and axillary lymph nodes following preoperative treatment. Participants whose disease is not surgically resectable following preoperative treatment are considered as not having pCR. The biopsies were analyzed by differential expression analysis using standard procedures in R package, limma. A predictive Random Forest model was trained using leave-pair-out-cross-validation with the 80 genes most associated with pCR and/or non-pCR. This model gives an accuracy rate, which indicates the percentage of time that the gene profile predicts pCR or non-pCR for both the pre-treatment and on-treatment profiles. An increase in accuracy for the on-treatment profile would indicate an adaptive response within the tumor associated with resistance to HER2 directed therapies.	18 Weeks
Residual Cancer Burden Rate by ctDNA Profile Change	Residual cancer burden is calculated an then categorized based on the methods described in the following: Symmans WF, Peintinger F, Hatzis C, et al. Measurement of residual breast cancer burden to predict survival after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. J Clin Oncol 2007;25(28): 4414-22. This method uses tumor size, the proportion of that tumor that is invasive carcinoma, the number of axillary lymph nodes containing metastatic carcinoma and the diameter of the largest metastasis in an axillary lymph node. These parameters are combined in a formula that outputs a RCB index. This index is divided into 4 categories: RCB-0, RCB-I, RCB-II, and RCB-III. The previous categories are in order of increasing severity of RCB. Biopsy/blood will be collected on day 1 and day 8 of therapy for analysis of circulating biomarkers, including ctDNA. Associations between change in ctDNA during therapy and residual cancer burden at the time of definitive surgery will be evaluated.	18 weeks

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Filipa Lynce, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Pernas S, Guerriero JL, Naumenko S, Goel S, Regan MM, Hu J, Harrison BT, Lynce F, Lin NU, Partridge A, Morikawa A, Hutchinson J, Mittendorf EA, Sokolov A, Overmoyer B. Early on-treatment transcriptional profiling as a tool for improving pathological response prediction in HER2-positive inflammatory breast cancer. Ther Adv Med Oncol. 2022 Jul 30;14:17588359221113269. doi: 10.1177/17588359221113269. eCollection 2022.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): August 1, 2013
• Primary Completion (Actual): June 1, 2018
• Study Completion (Actual): January 1, 2026

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: February 20, 2013
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: February 20, 2013
• First Posted (Estimated): February 21, 2013

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): February 5, 2026
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 16, 2026
• Last Verified: January 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Neoplasms by Site; Neoplasms; Skin Diseases; Breast Diseases; Skin and Connective Tissue Diseases; Breast Neoplasms; Amino Acids, Peptides, and Proteins; Proteins; Organic Chemicals; Therapeutics; Surgical Procedures, Operative; Hydrocarbons; Cycloparaffins; Hydrocarbons, Alicyclic; Hydrocarbons, Cyclic; Terpenes; Carbohydrates; Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons; Hydrocarbons, Aromatic; Polycyclic Compounds; Glycosides; Antibodies, Monoclonal, Humanized; Antibodies, Monoclonal; Antibodies; Immunoglobulins; Immunoproteins; Blood Proteins; Serum Globulins; Globulins; Taxoids; Cyclodecanes; Diterpenes; Phosphoramide Mustards; Nitrogen Mustard Compounds; Mustard Compounds; Hydrocarbons, Halogenated; Phosphoramides; Organophosphorus Compounds; Anthracyclines; Naphthacenes; Aminoglycosides; Daunorubicin; Trastuzumab; Cyclophosphamide; Doxorubicin; Paclitaxel; Radiotherapy; pertuzumab; Mastectomy
• Other Study ID Numbers: 12-497