During a press confernece at SABCS 2013, Dr Sherene Loi presents data on women with HER2-positive breast cancer who had the highest levels of immune cells in their tumours and how they gained the most benefit from presurgery treatment with chemotherapy and trastuzumab.

“Our new data further support the positive relationship between tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes and better outcomes with trastuzumab therapy, this time in a cohort of patients with newly diagnosed HER2-positive breast cancer who received the therapy before surgery.

“It seems, therefore, that levels of tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes may be a good biomarker of response to trastuzumab in primary breast cancer, something that researchers have been looking for with little success for some time,” added Loi.