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In the following exclusive video, Hatem Soliman, MD, of The Center for Women's Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, discusses the results of the DESTINY-Breast04 trial and how it could revolutionize breast cancer care.

The following is a transcript of his remarks:

My name is Dr. Hatem Soliman. I'm a breast medical oncologist at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida.

The DESTINY-04 study is an important phase III study that was designed to ask the question of whether trastuzumab deruxtecan, or T-DXd as we would call it, has any activity in women that have moderate levels of HER2 expression.

HER2 is a protein that's overexpressed in about 15% of women with breast cancer, and it's an important therapeutic target for those women and has shown dramatic activity with a variety of different agents that target HER2 to really improve outcomes for that small subset of women.

This trial was designed to look at women that do not overexpress HER2 via the traditional criteria, but they express just enough of it on the surface of the cells that they thought that T-DXd may be able to bind to the cells and allow the chemotherapy that's attached to the antibodies to get in there and kill the cells effectively and provide better activity compared to the physician's choice -- the usual approved chemotherapies that we would administer in this setting.

The majority of the women that were entered on [to the study] were hormone receptor positive and HER2 low, but there were women that were also hormone receptor negative and HER2 low, or we would call them triple-negative breast cancer. The primary endpoint of the study was to look at the activity of the drug, though, in the hormone receptor positive HER2-low subset.

The data was quite exciting that was presented by Dr. [Shanu] Modi. It led to a standing ovation actually in the room, so the reaction kind of told the story. I think that everybody felt like this was very exciting data. That the risk of progression of disease was halved basically in the women that got T-DXd compared to the physician's choice of chemo, and the safety data was consistent with what we had seen previously with T-DXd as well. And there was a survival advantage, which is considered the gold standard for clinical benefit when we're assessing these drugs.

So overall it was, I think, a win-win for everybody involved. It was very exciting for the physicians involved, and also for the patients that have a new option now that we can prescribe to them hopefully very soon to be able to improve their outcomes with their breast cancer.