Lori Anderson, 57, was told she might have only two to five years left to live after her triple-negative breast cancer spread through her body. Her latest scan now shows no evidence of metastatic disease, the result of an experimental drug combination she received years before it became a formally approved treatment.
Anderson first discovered a lump in August 2021 and was diagnosed that month with stage 2b triple-negative breast cancer, according to KSHB 41 Kansas City. She began treatment at Saint Luke's Cancer Institute, undergoing chemotherapy, surgery, radiation and immunotherapy. Her cancer initially responded well, but it returned and spread. By the end of January 2023, Anderson said her triple-negative breast cancer had metastasized to her skin, and by June 2023 her treatment was no longer controlling the disease, the station reports.
Triple-negative breast cancer lacks the estrogen, progesterone and HER2 receptors that many other treatments target, making it notoriously difficult to fight. The subtype accounts for 10% to 15% of all breast cancer diagnoses in the United States, and patients diagnosed with distant metastatic disease face a five-year relative survival rate of roughly 12% to 13%, according to data cited by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Anderson said she feared not having time left with family and friends.
A Team Decision Years Ahead of FDA Approval
As the disease progressed, Anderson’s team at Saint Luke's Hospital Koontz Center for Advanced Breast Cancer, led by medical director Dr. Timothy Pluard, chose to combine pembrolizumab (Keytruda) with sacituzumab govitecan-hziy (Trodelvy). KSHB reported that published evidence establishing the combination’s safety and effectiveness in triple-negative breast cancer was lacking at the time, and that Anderson was among the early patients to receive it.
Pluard described Keytruda as an immunotherapy and Trodelvy as an antibody-drug conjugate, a treatment designed to deliver cancer-killing medication to cells expressing a particular target. He told KSHB that the team saw signs of a response within weeks. Anderson’s tumor markers had fallen significantly within four months and eventually became undetectable, the station reported.
The FDA approved the Trodelvy-Keytruda combination in June 2026 as a first-line treatment for adults with unresectable locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer whose tumors have a PD-L1 combined positive score (CPS) of at least 10 on an FDA-authorized test. In the 443-patient Phase 3 ASCENT-04/KEYNOTE-D19 trial, median progression-free survival was 11.2 months with the combination and 7.8 months with chemotherapy plus Keytruda; overall-survival data were immature, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The results showed a 35% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death, as also reported by CURE. A separate exploratory post-hoc analysis of 443 patients, presented at the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting, found a 33% reduction in the risk of a second disease progression or death compared with chemotherapy plus Keytruda, according to The ASCO Post. These trial findings describe group outcomes, not a prediction for an individual patient.
What Approval and Survival Statistics Can—and Cannot—Show
The FDA approval covers a specific first-line setting and patients whose tumors meet the PD-L1 CPS threshold. The National Cancer Institute says the FDA typically requires evidence from a large clinical trial before an anticancer drug can be used broadly in patient care. That general process does not establish whether Anderson received her earlier regimen through a clinical trial or another route, nor does it make her preapproval treatment standard care. For population context, National Cancer Institute SEER data report a five-year relative survival rate of 14.9% for distant HR-/HER2- female breast cancer. This is a group-level estimate, not an individual prognosis.
Blood Test Finds No Molecular Trace of Disease
To track Anderson's response at the molecular level, her care team used Signatera, a personalized tumor-informed circulating tumor DNA test that looks for cancer-associated DNA fragments in the bloodstream, which can help clinicians monitor treatment response or signs of recurrence in appropriate patients. The test is built to create a tumor-specific fingerprint capable of detecting residual cancer fragments down to one part per million, identifying recurrence an average of 10.5 months earlier than standard imaging, according to Natera. Medicare covers Signatera testing for patients across Stage II through Stage IV breast cancer, in both treatment and recurrence monitoring settings, the company notes.
Anderson's Signatera testing showed no detectable molecular evidence of disease. She had a PET scan this past September — her first since just before surgery — and said the report showed no evidence of metastatic disease. Even so, patients who have experienced metastatic breast cancer need continued monitoring, as the station's report makes clear.
A Decade-Old Kansas City Facility Built for Stage 4 Care
The Koontz Center, which opened in 2016, was established to focus on comprehensive care for patients with Stage 4 or metastatic breast cancer and marks its 10th anniversary this month. It remains the first facility in the United States dedicated exclusively to comprehensive care for metastatic breast cancer patients, according to Saint Luke's Health System. The center is named in connection with the Paul Koontz Endowed Chair of Breast Disease, honoring Dr. Paul G. Koontz Jr., a longtime Kansas City surgical oncologist, an endowed chair affiliated with the University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Medicine.
Saint Luke's Cancer Institute also operates a Center for Precision Oncology alongside the Koontz Center, offering whole genome sequencing and computational biology analysis for advanced cancer patients across a 450-mile radius around Kansas City, giving physicians the ability to identify specific tumor genomic alterations down to the DNA level. Nationally, an estimated 168,000 to 170,000 women were living with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer in the United States between 2025 and 2026, according to Susan G. Komen — the population of patients who stand to benefit as treatments like Anderson's move from off-label experimentation to approved standard of care.
Anderson’s outcome is an individual response; clinical-trial and population statistics describe groups of patients and cannot predict what will happen to any one person.
