Monitoring of Triple Negative Breast Cancer After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) defined by the absence of estrogen and progesterone receptor (ER/PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) gene amplification, is an aggressive disease with a poor prognosis that disproportionately affects young women and African Americans, and represents a major unmet need in the field. Triple negative breast cancers account for approximately 10-15% of breast cancer diagnoses in the United States and display a more aggressive biologic growth pattern with an increased risk of advanced disease at the time of diagnosis and high recurrence risk in patients with early-stage TNBC 1 Dent R Hanna WM Trudeau M Rawlinson E Sun P Narod SA. Pattern of metastatic spread in triple-negative breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2009; 115: 423-428 Crossref PubMed Scopus (412) Google Scholar , 2 Leone JP Leone J Zwenger AO Vallejo CT Leone BA. Prognostic Significance of Tumor Subtypes in Women With Breast Cancer According to Stage: A Population-based Study. Am J Clin Oncol. 2019; 42: 588-595 Crossref PubMed Scopus (16) Google Scholar , 3 Sporikova Z Koudelakova V Trojanec R Hajduch M. Genetic Markers in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. Clin Breast Cancer. 2018; 18: e841-ee50 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar . The response rates to standard chemotherapy are low at 5 to 10%, and the survival of pre-treated patients with metastatic TNBC is less than 12 months.