Conditions: Breast Cancer Metastatic Breast Cancer
Keywords: HER2 negative HER2 positive
Allocation: NON_RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 31
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of this research study is to see what effects trastuzumab in combination with vinorelbine has on breast cancer when the participant has circulating tumor cells that are positive for the protein called HER2. Trastuzumab is an FDA approved drug that targets HER2. The drug combination of trastuzumab and vinorelbine is an effective treatment for patients with breast cancers that are positive for HER2. This trial seeks to determine if the combination can also benefit participants whose original breast cancer was HER2 negative but whose circulating tumor cells are HER2 positive.

Detailed description:
OBJECTIVES:

Primary

* To assess the objective response rate (ORR) of trastuzumab and vinorelbine in patients with metastatic breast cancer with HER2 negative primary tumors and HER2 positive circulating tumor cells.

Secondary

* To describe the number of CTCs and the CTCs characteristics before and after therapy, and to explore the correlation of these findings with response.
* To further characterize the safety and tolerability.
* To evaluate progression-free survival.
* To evaluate clinical benefit rate \[complete response (CR)+partial response (PR)+stable disease (SD)\>24 weeks\].

Exploratory

* To determine the clinical feasibility of high-throughput mutation profiling on circulating tumor cells (CTCs).

Arms:
arm 1: Cycle 1: Patients received trastuzumab 8 mg/kg intravenously (IV) on day 1 and vinorelbine 25 mg/kg IV on days 1, 8 and 15 of each 21 day cycle Cycles 2+: Patients received trastuzumab 6 mg/kg IV on day 1 and vinorelbine 25 mg/kg IV on days 1, 8 and 15 of each 21 day cycle Patients were treated until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Eligibility required patients to have HER2 amplification by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) (mean ratio \> 2.0). The CTC tests of the first 11 patients were done at DFCI. The study team then decided to proceed with a different CTC test performed outside of DFCI. Because the method of CTC isolation was different from that performed by DFCI, the first 11 patients were placed into a separate cohort (Cohort A) and the remaining 20 patients represented the main cohort. arm 2: Cycle 1: Patients received trastuzumab 8 mg/kg intravenously (IV) on day 1 and vinorelbine 25 mg/kg IV on days 1, 8 and 15 of each 21 day cycle Cycles 2+: Patients received trastuzumab 6 mg/kg IV on day 1 and vinorelbine 25 mg/kg IV on days 1, 8 and 15 of each 21 day cycle Patients were treated until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Eligibility required patients to have HER2 amplification by FISH (mean ratio \> 2.0). The CTC tests of the first 11 patients were done at DFCI. The study team then decided to proceed with a different CTC test performed outside of DFCI. Because the method of CTC isolation was different from that performed by DFCI, the first 11 patients were placed into a separate cohort (Cohort A) and the remaining 20 patients represented the main cohort.

Interventions: intervention 1: trastuzumab intervention 2: vinorelbine
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None intervention 2: None

Protocol document: