Biology, Metastatic Patterns, and Treatment of Patients with Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

By C. Anders, Lisa A. Carey. Clinical Breast Cancer, 2009

621 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Of the estimated 1 million cases of breast cancer diagnosed annually worldwide, it is estimated that over 170,000 will harbor the triple-negative (estrogen receptor/progesterone receptor/HER2–negative) phenotype. Most, though not all, triple-negative breast cancers will be basal-like on gene expression micorarrays. The basal-like molecular subtype exhibits a unique molecular profile and set of risk factors, aggressive and early pattern of metastasis, limited treatment options, and poor prognosis. Large population-based studies have identified a higher proportion of triple-negative breast tumors among premenopausal African American women, and a suggestion that increased parity, younger age at first-term pregnancy, shorter duration of breast feeding, and elevated hip-to-waist ratio might be particular risk factors. When BRCA1 mutation carriers develop breast cancer, it is usually basal-like; given the central role of BRCA1 in DNA repair, this could have profound therapeutic implications. When diagnosed, triple-negative breast cancers illustrate preferential relapse in visceral organs, including the central nervous system. Although initial response to chemotherapy might be more profound, relapse is early and common among triple-negative breast cancers compared with luminal breast cancers. The armamentarium of “targeted therapeutics” for triple-negative breast cancer is evolving and includes strategies to inhibit angiogenesis, epidermal growth factor receptor, and other kinases. Finally, the positive association between triple-negative breast cancer and BRCA mutations makes inhibition of poly(adenosine diphosphate-ribose) polymerase–1 an attractive therapeutic strategy that is in active study.

Subfields: Cancer Research, Oncology, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0940f54f7717fa94b73594a34d45127fcd85a233

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In Cancer Research

Citations in the corpus

Triple Negative Breast Cancer Cell Lines: One Tool in the Search for Better Treatment of Triple Negative Breast Cancer (2010, background): “Subsequent analyses have suggested that the clinical TNBC classification and the array based basal classification significantly overlap but are not identical [6, 46, 47].”