Yeon Hee Park
Leads breast medical oncology at Samsung Medical Center and has driven Korean participation in the HER2 and CDK4/6 trials that changed practice.
Yeon Hee Park's research covers HER2-positive and hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer, including premenopausal disease, with contributions to the trastuzumab deruxtecan, palbociclib, and ribociclib programmes and to Korean genomic cohorts of young-onset breast cancer.
| Title | Journal | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Palbociclib plus exemestane with GnRH agonist versus capecitabine in premenopausal HR+ metastatic breast cancer (Young-PEARL) | Lancet Oncology | 2019 |
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.
For stage II-III triple-negative breast cancer, chemotherapy plus pembrolizumab before surgery and pembrolizumab alone afterwards is now the standard approach worldwide, and the survival gain is real, not just a surrogate. It does not apply to stage I disease or to hormone-receptor-positive or HER2-positive cancers. The price is a year of immunotherapy with a meaningful chance of a permanent endocrine side effect such as hypothyroidism or adrenal insufficiency.