Inflammatory breast cancer: New factors contribute to disease etiology: A review

Abstract

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a highly metastatic and fatal form of breast cancer. In fact, IBC is characterized by specific morphological, phenotypic, and biological properties that distinguish it from non-IBC. The aggressive behavior of IBC being more common among young women and the low survival rate alarmed researchers to explore the disease biology. Despite the basic and translational studies needed to understand IBC disease biology and identify specific biomarkers, studies are limited by few available IBC cell lines, experimental models, and paucity of patient samples. Above all, in the last decade, researchers were able to identify new factors that may play a crucial role in IBC progression. Among identified factors are cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, and proteases. In addition, viral infection was also suggested to participate in the etiology of IBC disease. In this review, we present novel factors suggested by different studies to contribute to the etiology of IBC and the proposed new therapeutic insights.

Keywords: Cytokines; Inflammatory breast cancer; Proteases; Viral infection.

Graphical abstract

Fig. 1

Tumor emboli of IBC, showing carcinoma cells (green arrow) secrete proteases and cytokines that facilitate extracellular matrix degradation, invasion and motility. TAM (gray arrow) secrete cytokines, chemokines, growth factors induce immunosuppression and dissemination of carcinoma cells. HCMV infected cells (blue arrow) secrete cytokines and proteases associated with angiogenesis, immunosuppression, invasion and motility of IBC carcinoma cells.