Cláudio Kemp Award

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Cláudio Kemp Award

“Hey cutie! Hey bro!” Dr. Claudio Kemp was known not only for his admirable curriculum, but also for his way of treating people… relaxed, laid-back… he brought a touch of lightness to colour the seriousness of the profession. He used to teach not only technical skills, but also human care.

His particular way of interacting made people gravitate towards him, especially his students!

Passionate about breast imaging, he influenced many generations in academia!

I hope that the young researcher can make use of his legacy and grow professionally with humility and competence, following on his footstep. Simone Elias (one of his students and later colleague) once said: ‘he looked at life with the eyes of a sage, to the future with the eyes of a child, and to the world with eyes of an artist’.

Mariza, Ana and Marta Kemp

Professor Claudio Kemp award is directed to young researchers, and given to the researcher who presented the best paper at BBCS – in the category of ‘up to 35 years old’. The prize awarded is tickets, lodging and registration to the Jornada Paulista de Mastologia of the same year.

Awarded

INVESTIGATION OF CIRCULATING-TUMOR DNA (ctDNA) IN PATIENTS WITH NON-METASTATIC TRIPLE-NEGATIVE BREAST CANCER (TNBC) SUBMITTED TO NEOADJUVANT CHEMOTHERAPY

Rafael Canfield Brianese¹, Giovana Tardin Torrezan¹, Marina de Brot Andrade², Vladmir Claudio Cordeiro de Lima³, Solange Moraes Sanches³, Maria Nirvana da Cruz Formiga⁴, Fabiana Baroni Alves Makdissi⁵, Dirce Maria Carraro¹

¹Laboratory of Clinical and Functional Genomics – A. C. Camargo Cancer Center, São Paulo (SP) – Brazil
²Pathology Department – A.C. Camargo Cancer Center, São Paulo (SP) – Brazil
³Clinical Oncology Department – A.C. Camargo Cancer Center, São Paulo (SP) – Brazil
⁴Oncogenetics and Clinical Oncology Department – A.C. Camargo Cancer Center, São Paulo – Brazil
⁵Breast Surgery Department – A. C. Camargo Cancer Center, São Paulo (SP) – Brazil

Objective: Loss-of-function germline mutation in BRCA1 increases breast cancer risk, especially the TNBC subtype. BRCA1 impairment may confer benefit from treatment with DNA damage-inducing drugs and PARP1 inhibitors. Patients who respond to neoadjuvant chemotherapy tend to have good outcomes. Our aim is to characterize the resistance to chemotherapy in patients with germline-characterized TNBC by investigating somatic mutations in ctDNA.
Methodology: Germline genetic testing using cancer-predisposing gene panels (26-126 genes) for classifying TNBC as Hereditary or Sporadic. Somatic mutation identification in tumor (409 cancer-related gene panel) and screening of ctDNA in plasma samples during treatment.
Results: We enrolled 96 TNBC patients of which 88 were tested for germline variants: 23% (20/88) of cases were Hereditary – BRCA1 (16%), BRCA2 (4%), PALB2 (1%), RAD51D (1%) and TP53 (1%). Tumor mutation burden (TMB) analysis (43 cases) showed that 11.6% had high and 89.4% low TMB, not associated with Hereditary status. We found, on average, 3 somatic variants per tumor (range 1-7) and used them as tumor marks for screening ctDNA in plasma. Somatic mutations in TP53 were identified in most tumors (71%). In ctDNA before treatment, detection of at least one tumor mutation was observed in 24 out of 30 patients (80%) and no association was observed regarding Hereditary status and TMB score. Although ctDNA was not associated to the residual cancer burden (RCB) score, ctDNA- positive patients were associated with clinical progression, either at baseline and during monitoring (post-neoadjuvant chemo) and ctDNA identification anticipated progression detected by imaging.
Conclusion: Hereditary tumors, markedly due to germline variants in BRCA1, are frequent in TNBC. Tumor-mark identification using gene panel and ctDNA screening in plasma samples provide valuable information regarding clinical progression of patients treated with pre-operative chemotherapy.

Keywords: hereditary tumor; triple-negative breast cancer; ctDNA; liquid biopsy