Immune Response to Anti-HER2 Therapies in Patients With HER2-Positive Stage I-IV Breast Cancer

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES I. To determine the correlation between HER2 specific T-cell response in HER2-positive breast cancer patients with stage I-IV who receive anti-HER2 therapies, such as trastuzumab, pertuzumab, lapatinib, or neratinib and clinical responses.

II. To determine the correlation between antibody response in HER2-positive breast cancer patients with stage I-IV who receive anti-HER2 therapies, such as trastuzumab, pertuzumab, lapatinib, or neratinib and clinical responses.

EXPLORATORY OBJECTIVES:

I. To estimate the proportion of patients who develop HER2-specific T cell and endogenous antibody responses.

II. To examine within individual patients trends in levels of HER2 CD4 T-cells, HER2 CD8 T-cells, and HER2-specific antibodies over the course of treatment.

III. To determine if combination therapy induces immunity to common breast cancer associated antigens (i.e. CEA, IGFBP2, and P53).

IV. To determine if induction of HER2-specific T cell or antibody immunity is associated with improved progression-free and overall survival in patients.

V. To determine if there are Fc gamma receptor (R) or HLA genotypes associated with the ability to generate immunity in response to anti-HER2 therapy.

VI. To determine whether anti-HER2 therapy induces HER2 loss and modulation of HER2-specific adaptive immune responses.

VII. To determine if loss-of-function mutations in antigen presenting genes are associated with recurrence in patients with HER2+ breast cancer.

VIII. To determine gene expression levels in tumors from patients who did not achieve pathologic complete response (pCR) that are associated with recurrence.

OUTLINE:

Patients undergo collection of blood samples at baseline, 8 and 16 weeks after starting treatment, and at the time of invasive disease recurrence for patients with stage I-III, or progressive disease for patients with stage IV. Patients with stage IV HER2 positive breast cancer with no disease progression >= 2 years on the same line of therapy, undergo blood sample collection at baseline anytime during their treatment with anti-HER2 therapies, 8 and 16 weeks after the first blood draw, and at the time of invasive disease recurrence. Patients also undergo tumor tissue collection for the evaluation of gene expression and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) variants.