Prospective single-arm study of endocrine therapies with ovarian function suppression in premenopausal patients with node-positive early breast cancer with low genomic risk (INTERSTELLAR trial, KBCSG-25).
Authors: Ahn Sung Gwe , Kook Yoonwon , Moon Hyeong-Gon , Lee Jeong Eon , Ahn Jee Hyun , Chae Heejung , Lee Jeeyeon , Park Min Ho , Yoon Chang Ik , Kang Taewoo , Youn Hyun Jo , Yoo Tae-Kyung , Kim Hyun-Ah , Kim Eun-Kyu , Kang Su Hwan , Lim Woosung , Lee Han-Byoel , Han Wonshik , Park Yeon Hee 
Published: June 2023

TPS618

Background: It is unclear whether the clinical benefit of cytotoxic adjuvant chemotherapy (CT) could be replaced by ovarian-function suppression (OFS) in premenopausal, estrogen receptor (ER)+HER2- breast cancer patients who have high clinical risk score and low genomic risk assessed by multigene assays. The TAILORx trial included a subgroup of premenopausal women with high clinical risk scores and midrange RS scores and found that CT, in addition to endocrine treatment (ET), offered clear benefits in terms of invasive disease-free survival (iDFS) and distant-recurrence-free survival (DRFS) compared to ET alone. However, a majority of the patients did not receive OFS, and the use of OFS as an alternative to chemotherapy in this population is still an area of ongoing research and debate. In addition, in premenopausal women of the RxPonder trial, which enrolled node-positive disease, it is noted that the addition of OFS to ET for at least 12 months improved iDFS numerically in the ET-alone arm, although this improvement did not reach statistical significance. We hypothesized that a favorable DRFS could be achieved by OFS plus ET without CT in premenopausal, pN1, ER+HER2- breast cancer with low genomic risk identified by an NGS-based multigene assay, the OncoFREE. Methods: The INTERSTELLAR trial is a prospective, multicenter, single-arm, non-inferiority clinical study. Premenopausal women aged ≤50 years with pT1-2 ER+HER2- breast cancer and 1-3 lymph node metastasis will be enrolled. They will be tested with OncoFREE, an NGS-based breast cancer prognosis multigene assay developed and available in South Korea, where a higher portion of the patients is premenopausal. Patients with low genomic risk (Decision Index≤20) are administered OFS plus tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor for five years. We hypothesize that the 5-year DRFS of the single arm treated with OFS plus ET would be not inferior to 96.1%, which is observed in the chemo-ET arm from the premenopausal subgroup of the RxPonder trial. The one-sided test with a non-inferiority margin of 3% and statistical power of 80% at a significance level of 0.05 resulted in a sample size of 380 patients with low genomic risk. Considering a 70% designation to low genomic risk by OncoFREE and a 10% drop-out rate, 604 patients will be enrolled from 15 tertiary care hospitals in South Korea. The primary endpoint will be tested in the 380 patients with low genomic risk. The patients with high genomic risk will receive CT followed by ET and will be followed for survival analysis as a secondary end-point. The trial has not enrolled its first patient yet at the time of submission. Clinical trial information: NCT05333328 .