Triple negative breast cancer chemosensitivity and chemoresistance: current advances in biomarkers indentification

Abstract

Introduction: Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a heterogeneous clinicopathological entity constituting approximately 15 - 20% of all breast cancer (BC) patients. It shows high recurrence rate and poor prognosis. At this juncture, because of the lack of specific targeted therapies available and the development in patients of resistance to some therapeutic agents, clinical and translational settings have gained importance over the past decades.

Areas covered: The development of novel, safe and effective alternatives for the treatment of TNBC are in high demand. Therefore, this review aims to summarize the state of the art of TNBC, its current therapies and potential therapeutic targets. In particular, focus is put on recent advances regarding the identification of emerging biomarkers as prognostic and/or predictive markers, including surrogate markers for molecular tumor subtyping and identifying potential responders to new therapies.

Expert opinion: Effective development of informative markers could constitute an important armamentarium tool for identifying appropriate therapies to challenge the aggressiveness of TNBC.

Keywords: TNBC; drug resistance; predictive markers; prognostic markers; treatments.