Breast Cancer Research Takeaways from the ESMO Congress 2024

The European Society for Clinical Oncology Congress (ESMO) 2024 was Sept. 13-17 in Barcelona, Spain. The annual conference was attended by thousands of people engaged in all aspects of cancer research, care, and advocacy. This year's most important breast cancer research included new findings on Enhertu, updated date on Kisqali, and the safety of breastfeeding after treatment.

Read about research presented at ESMO Breast Cancer 2025.

The targeted therapy Enhertu (chemical name: fam-trastuzumab-deruxtecan-nxki) helped control areas of metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer in the brain, according to results from the DESTINY-Breast12 study presented on Sept. 13.

Progression-free survival (how long people lived without the cancer growing) of people with brain metastases was about 17 months. For about 71% of people with brain metastases, Enhertu made the areas of cancer in the brain shrink.

Women — including women with a BRCA mutation — who breastfeed after receiving breast cancer treatment don’t have a higher risk of recurrence (the cancer coming back) or of a new breast cancer, according to two international studies presented on Sept. 14.

People diagnosed with early-stage triple-negative breast cancer who received the immunotherapy Keytruda (chemical name: pembrolizumab) along with chemotherapy before and after surgery had better event-free survival — how long they lived without the cancer coming back — according to 2021 results from the KEYNOTE-522 study.

Results presented on Sept. 15 and published at the same time in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that people who received Keytruda had better overall survival — how long they lived whether or not the cancer came back. Overall survival rates were 86.6% in people who received Keytruda and 81.7% in people who didn't.

“Triple-negative breast cancer has the worst outcomes compared to other types of breast cancer. The results of this trial have found a much-needed new way to treat this aggressive type of breast cancer, and the treatment regime has already become the new standard of care for these patients,” presenter Peter Schmid, FRCP, MD, PhD, of Queen Mary University of London, said about the results.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Kisqali (chemical name: ribociclib) in combination with an aromatase inhibitor to treat early-stage, hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer with a high risk of recurrence after surgery. The approval was based, in part, on results presented at the 2024 ESMO Congress.

Women who did a combination of high-intensity interval training, plus either strength work or moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, during chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer were more likely to be alive and less likely to have the cancer come back than women who didn’t exercise during chemo.