Sung-Bae Kim
Sung-Bae Kim is a leading Korean breast oncologist on the steering committees of the trastuzumab emtansine and deruxtecan trials.
Sung-Bae Kim has been an investigator on many pivotal HER2-positive and triple-negative breast cancer trials, including EMILIA, DESTINY-Breast studies, and immunotherapy combinations, and co-leads Korean breast cancer research networks.
For HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer that has progressed after trastuzumab and a taxane, trastuzumab deruxtecan is now the standard second-line treatment and T-DM1 has moved later in the sequence. The benefit is large enough that ADC design, not just the target, is understood to be what matters. Patients need lung monitoring because of the risk of pneumonitis.
Patients whose breast cancer was previously called HER2-negative may now be eligible for an effective HER2-directed drug if their tumour has even low-level HER2 staining, so pathology reports must now distinguish HER2-low (1+ or 2+/ISH-negative) from HER2-zero. This applies to metastatic disease after at least one line of chemotherapy; it does not mean these patients benefit from trastuzumab or other older HER2 drugs.