Wassim McHayleh, MD, MBA, FACP: When we talk about the unmet needs in any particular cancer, especially when you ask an oncologist about their opinion when it comes to treatment options, I’m greedy. When it comes to survival, I’m greedier. I want more options, more patients cured, longer survivals, and better toxicity profiles. Having said that, we’ve seen tremendous progress in treating ER [estrogen receptor]-positive breast cancer. I’d like to see more tolerable options. I’d like to see more targetable pathways and targeted agents that provide longer PFS [progression-free survival] and OS [overall survival], so our patients live longer and have a better quality of life. The key to this is enrollment in clinical trials, and supporting clinical trials and research for breast cancer. I’d like to leave the last comment to Alisa.

Alisa Vinokurov, PharmD: As we’ve discussed, oncology is ever-changing. We just talked about the uncovering of HER2 low, which is new. We talk about all these new pathways we’re aware of. But with targeted therapy, there isn’t as much of a range as we’d like to see for patients who have these specific mutations or things that we could help them with and [offer] a better toxicity profile.

In terms of unmet needs, we’d love to have more therapies for us as pharmacists to memorize from start to finish, of course. Overall, as an interdisciplinary team, we have residency-trained pharmacists, oncologists, and midlevel [professionals]. The more we work together as a clinical entity to help these patients, the better off the patients will be. Our institution will be more renowned. It’s more so for the benefit of the human being, the patient who’s sitting in front of us who we’re talking face to face with, trying to get them healthier and to live longer. Oncology is a beautiful field, and helping these patients as much as we can is the best we can do.

Transcript edited for clarity.