New treatment strategies for patients with triple-negative breast cancer

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Although patients with hormone receptor-positive and/or HER2-positive breast cancer benefit from endocrine and HER2-targeted agents in addition to combination chemotherapy regimens, patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) suffer from a particularly unfavorable prognosis particularly when not responding well to anthracycline-taxane chemotherapy. Novel treatment options are urgently needed to improve prognosis of these patients as well.

RECENT FINDINGS: Potential options for optimized therapy of patients with TNBC consist in, first, optimization of chemotherapy through optimization of chemotherapy regimens with may be reached through optimized (i.e., dose-dense) scheduling, second, optimization of chemotherapy through introduction of novel chemotherapy agents (such as platinum compounds as alternative of additional chemotherapy), third, identification and development of novel targeted agents, and fourth, identification of patients with or without response through biomarkers to individual treatments to allow for a more personalized treatment approach.

SUMMARY: We summarize recent findings for novel treatment options particularly focusing on platinum-based chemotherapy, potential novel targeted therapies such as antiangiogenic agents or inhibition of poly-A-ribose-polymerase, and prognostic/predictive biomarkers such as tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes or BRCA.