Recent Advances in the Treatment of Breast Cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy in women. It is classified into a few major molecular subtypes according to hormone and growth factor receptor expression. Over the past few years, substantial advances have been made in the discovery of new drugs for treating BC. Improved understanding of the biologic heterogeneity of BC has allowed the development of more effective and individualized approach to treatment. In this review, we provide an update about the current treatment strategy and discuss the various emerging novel therapies for the major molecular subtypes of BC. A brief account of the clinical development of inhibitors of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase, cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6, phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B/mammalian target of rapamycin pathway, histone deacetylation, multi-targeting tyrosine kinases, and immune checkpoints for personalized treatment of BC is included. However, no targeted drug has been approved for the most aggressive subtype—triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Thus, we discuss the heterogeneity of TNBC and how molecular subtyping of TNBC may help drug discovery for this deadly disease. The emergence of drug resistance also poses threat to the successful development of targeted therapy in various molecular subtypes of BC. New clinical trials should incorporate advanced methods to identify changes induced by drug treatment, which may be associated with the upregulation of compensatory signaling pathways in drug resistant cancer cells.

An atlas of infiltrated B-lymphocytes in breast cancer revealed by paired single-cell RNA-sequencing and antigen receptor profiling

“…Human breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease and contains several histologically different subtypes(Polyak, 2011; Tong et al, 2018). We FACS-analyzed infiltrated hCD45 + immune cells in fresh isolated breast cancer samples and found that the presence of infiltrated hCD20 + B cells was significantly higher in TNBCs than in other breast cancer subtypes (FigS1).…”

ECT2 associated to PRICKLE1 are poor-prognosis markers in triple-negative breast cancer

“…Among breast cancers, TNBC are considered as the most aggressive form and no targeted therapy is currently available due to a lack of specific targets 1 . Here, we show that PRICKLE1 is overexpressed in TNBC and is a poor-prognosis marker.…”

“…Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive molecular subtype of breast cancer 1 . In contrast with mammary cancers of other subtypes (HR+/HER2− and HER2+), TNBCs do not express hormone receptors and HER2 oncogene and thus are not candidate to hormone therapy and anti-HER2 therapy 1 . Chemotherapy is the only systemic therapy currently approved for this subtype.…”

“…Chemotherapy is the only systemic therapy currently approved for this subtype. However, TNBC is highly invasive with strong metastatic propensity 1 . We recently identified PRICKLE1 as poor-prognosis marker in breast cancer 2 .…”

Drug repurposing for breast cancer therapy: Old weapon for new battle

“…">Current breast cancer therapyUnlike a decade ago, clinicians today have multiple choices for breast cancer treatment depending on the size, stage, grade, metastatic behavior, aggressiveness and intrinsic molecular subtyping of tumor, age, menopausal status, overall health, comorbidities, and preferences of the patient [9][10][11][12][13]. Chemotherapy, hormone therapy, immunotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery are the common modalities for breast cancer [10,14]. Primary choice of treatment usually includes surgery with the aim of complete resection of the major tumor mass on the first hand.…”