Front Row Seat: Can We Talk about the Cure? A Conversation with Dr. Eric Winer
Live from Stage 4 | Episode #027 | 05/05/2026 | Front Row Seat
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Guest
Dr. Eric P. Winer, MD is an internationally renowned medical oncologist and breast cancer researcher who currently serves as the Director of the Yale Cancer Center and the Physician-in-Chief of Smilow Cancer Hospital. He returned to his alma mater, Yale University, in February 2022 after spending over two decades as a leader at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Current Roles & Academic Appointments
Director, Yale Cancer Center.
President and Physician-in-Chief, Smilow Cancer Hospital.
Alfred Gilman Professor, Pharmacology and Medicine (Medical Oncology) at Yale School of Medicine.
Deputy Dean for Cancer Research, Yale School of Medicine.
Professional Background & Career
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (1997–2022): Spent 24 years in various leadership roles, including Director of the Breast Oncology Center, Chief Clinical Development Officer, and Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs.
Harvard Medical School: Served as a Professor of Medicine and received the William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award in 2020.
Duke University (1989–1997): Served on the faculty and completed his hematology/oncology fellowship.
Leadership: Past President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) for the 2022–2023 term
Research & Impact
Dr. Winer has published over 600 articles and has designed numerous clinical trials that have personalized and advanced breast cancer treatment. His work has earned several major honors, including:
Gianni Bonadonna Breast Cancer Award (2017).
Susan G. Komen Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction (2018).
William L. McGuire Memorial Lecture Award (2016).
Personal Note
Dr. Winer has spoken openly about his personal journey as a patient, having lived with hemophilia and contracted HIV through a contaminated blood transfusion early in his career, which he notes has deeply influenced his empathetic approach to patient care.
Quick Summary
There are questions in the metastatic breast cancer community that have long felt too fragile to ask out loud. Can we actually cure this? For decades, the answer was an uncomfortable silence — or a careful redirect to "managing the disease."
That silence is breaking.
In this episode of Live from Stage IV, Victoria Goldberg sits down with Dr. Eric Winer — one of the world's foremost breast cancer oncologists, former president of ASCO, and director of the Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital — for a conversation that is equal parts science, honesty, and genuine hope.
Dr. Winer opens with the metaphor he used at the 2025 ABC8 conference in Lisbon: metastatic breast cancer as a river with two banks. On one side, stages I through III, treated with curative intent. On the other, stage IV — where for decades, no bridge existed. What he came to Lisbon to say, and what he tells Victoria here, is that a bridge may finally be coming into view.
What You'll Hear
The conversation moves through the clinical landscape with rare clarity. Dr. Winer walks through three trials — CLEOPATRA, PATINA, and DESTINY-Breast09 — not as a dry literature review, but as building blocks of an evolving argument: that for some patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, long-term remission achieved through standard therapy isn't just possible. It's already happening.
He introduces the concept of "curative hope" — a phrase he coined to describe the measured but real possibility that some patients on standard regimens will go years, even decades, without evidence of disease. And he's candid about what that means in the exam room: yes, he brings it up with patients. Yes, it matters.
Victoria pushes into the harder questions too — the ones her community actually asks. Why is HER2-positive disease the most promising subtype? What does cancer dormancy mean, and why do some ER-positive cancers recur 25 years later? Is surgery ever appropriate in the metastatic setting? Should patients change their diet, cut out sugar, worry about stress?
Dr. Winer answers all of it — directly, without false comfort, and with the perspective of someone who has treated breast cancer patients for more than 30 years.
On the Horizon
The episode also looks forward. Dr. Winer discusses two trials that represent a fundamentally new philosophy in HER2-positive metastatic treatment — not reactive, line-by-line therapy, but deliberate, sequential approaches designed with cure as the explicit goal:
SAPPHO (Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium), led by Dr. Nancy Lin and Dr. Heather Parsons, sequences four lines of HER2-directed therapy in a fixed pre-planned order before resistance develops — with a defined endpoint of stopping treatment entirely.
HERizon-Breast (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, now open for enrollment), led by principal investigator Dr. Pedram Razavi , who will be joining us on the podcast soon , uses ctDNA and imaging to personalize the treatment sequence in real time, adapting to each patient's response as it unfolds.
And for those following the growing science of lifestyle and cancer outcomes, Dr. Winer's discussion of the CHALLENGE trial and the work of researchers like Jennifer Ligibel, Katie Schmitz, and Melinda Irwin offers some of the most compelling evidence yet that exercise may do more than improve quality of life — it may influence the cancer itself.
A Worth Having
This episode doesn't offer easy reassurances. Dr. Winer is clear that cure is not yet within reach for every patient, and that most people living with stage IV will still face the full weight of this disease. But he is equally clear that the story is changing — faster than most people realize — and that the patients who line up for clinical trials are a big reason why.
Live from Stage IV exists precisely for conversations like this one: the kind that treat our community as the informed, engaged, resilient people they are.
Dr. Pedram Razavi, principal investigator of the HERizon-Breast trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering, will be a guest on an upcoming episode of Live from Stage IV.
Clinical Studies Cited
Discussed by Dr. Winer:
CLEOPATRA — The CLEOPATRA trial (NCT00567190) is a landmark Phase III study that established the combination of pertuzumab (Perjeta), trastuzumab (Herceptin), and docetaxel as the standard first-line treatment for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. It showed a significant improvement in overall survival, extending it to a median of 56.5 months compared to 40.8 months with trastuzumab and docetaxel alone
PATINA —The PATINA trial (AFT-38) is a pivotal Phase III clinical trial that demonstrated that adding palbociclib(Ibrance) to standard maintenance therapy significantly improves progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with HR-positive, HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. Results published in the New England Journal of Medicine show that this combination nearly doubled the time patients lived without their disease progressing compared to standard care alone
DESTINY-Breast09 (DB-09) — DESTINY-Breast09 is a landmark Phase 3clinical trial that has established a new standard of care for the first-line treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.
Results from the phase 3 trial (NCT04784715) indicated that combining fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) with pertuzumab significantly improves progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with first-line HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer compared to standard taxane-based therapy. Following these findings, the FDA approved this combination therapy in December 2025.
The SAPPHO trial (TBCRC 065) is a Phase II clinical study designed to test whether a highly intensified, sequential regimen of HER2-targeted drugs can achieve a cure in patients with de novo HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.
Unlike current standard-of-care treatments that are typically given indefinitely, the SAPPHO trial explores the possibility of "intensifying" therapy with a series of back-to-back medications and then stopping treatment for those who achieve an exceptional response
The CHALLENGE (CO.21) study is a landmark phase 3 randomized clinical trial that provides the first high-level evidence that a structured exercise program significantly improves survival for patients with stage III and high-risk stage II colon cancer after surgery and chemotherapy.
Presented at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study found that survivors who followed a 3-year structured exercise program had a 28% lower risk of cancer recurrence or death compared to those who received only health education materials
Mentioned in cutaways (Victoria):
The HERizon-Breast trial (NCT07459673) is a clinical study designed to test personalized treatment for newly diagnosed HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer by using circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) tests to guide therapy. It aims to overcome resistance to standard HER2-targeted therapies
