Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics 2018, Vol.6, No.2, 13-18
13
Research Report
Open Access
Diagnosis and Treatment of Triple Negative Breast Cancer
Jiayu Zhang
1
, Dongwei Zhang
1, 2
1 Department of Breast Surgery, the Second Affiliated of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China
2 Heilongjiang academy of medical sciences, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China
Corresponding author email:
Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics, 2018, Vol.6, No.2 doi:
Received: 25 May., 2018
Accepted: 05 Jun., 2018
Published: 01 Aug., 2018
Copyright © 2018
Zhang and Zhang, This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article
Zhang J.Y., and Zhang D.W., 2018, Diagnosis and treatment of triple negative breast cancer, 6(2): 13-18 (doi:
)
Abstract
Triple negative breast cancer is a subtype of breast cancer, which has the characteristics of easy invasion, high recurrence
rate and short survival period. Local surgery and systemic chemotherapy are the main treatment methods for triple negative breast
cancer. The toxicity of chemotherapy is severe, and the tumor will recur and metastasize quickly once it is resistant. At present, the
main research directions of triple negative breast cancer are new targeted therapy, immunotherapy and new endocrine therapy. This
article reviews the research progress of triple negative breast cancer.
Keywords
Triple negative breast cancer; Targeted therapy; Immunization therapy
Background
Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor that causes the death of women. It is a heterogeneous disease
with molecular biological characteristics and is different in clinical and pathological characteristics. In 2000,
Perou CM and team first classified breast cancer into 5 types according to cDNA gene chip technology, they are
LUMINAL A, LUMINAL B; HER-2 overexpression; Basal cell-like breast cancer and normal breast-like breast
cancer (Perou et al., 2000). Because of the cost and the feasibility of clinical operation, it is hard for gene map to
become the routine method of clinical detection. Therefore, the three-negative breast cancer (TNBC) which is
identified according to the immunohistochemical classification came into being.
1 Summary of TNBC
Bauer KR et al. put forward the concept of tri-negative breast cancer in 2007. As a subtype of breast cancer,
TNBC has its unique clinical characteristics and the same characteristics in immunohistochemical staining:
estrogen receptor ER, progesterone receptor PR, Human epidermal growth factor receptor HER-2 are negative
(Bakha et al., 2007). The incidence of TNBC accounts for 15%~25% of all breast cancer, and the incidence in
China is about 23.8% (Milioli et al., 2017).
1.1 Subtype of tri-negative breast cancer
In 2011, Lehmann and their team classified the TNBC into six subtypes by cluster analysis of gene chip data from
TNBC patients. They were basal cell like type 1 (basal-like 1), basal cell like type 2 (basal-like 2), Immune
regulatory subtype (immunomodula Tory, IM), mesenchymal type (mesenchymal, M), mesenchymal stem cell
like subtype (mesenchymal stem-like, MSL) and androgen receptor subtype (luminal androgen receptor, LAR)
(Lehmann et al., 2011). 75% of the TNBC showed BL subtype, while 54% of BL did not show in TNBC
molecular typing. The relationship between basal-like breast cancer BLBC and TNBC was mostly crossed, but not
completely overlapped (Badowskakozakiewicz et al., 2016; Hoadley et al., 2016).
1.2 Clinical features of triple negative breast cancer
TNBC has biological behavior and case characteristics which are different from other subtypes of breast cancer.
Firstly the onset age of TNBC is relatively young and most of them are lymph node negative. What’s more,
TNBC is a disease with high recurrence rate, short survival period and special metastasis pathway. Last but not
least, the clinical stage is usually not late when it is first diagnose, but TNBC is easy to invade. Some studies have
