A team of MUSC Hollings Cancer Center researchers has discovered one way in which triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells become resistant to immunotherapy and have tested a two-pronged treatment strategy that was able to restore sensitivity to immunotherapy in a preclinical model. The team, led by Besim Ogretmen, Ph.D.
, SmartState Endowed Chair in Lipidomics and Drug Discovery at MUSC, reports its findings in Cell Reports . TNBC accounts for 10% to 20% of all breast cancer cases and is highly aggressive, with five-year survival rates markedly lower than for other breast cancers. It is twice as likely to occur in women under 40 than those older than 50 and is more common in Black women.
TNBC is often diagnosed late, even after it has metastasized, making it difficult to treat. TNBC earns its "triple-negative" moniker because patients with the disease already have three strikes against them. Because TNBC cells lack two necessary receptors, hormone-based therapies, a mainstay of breast cancer treatments, won't work.
Neither will therapies that specifically target the protein HER2, as patients with TNBC lack it or have only very low levels. These three strikes leave patients with TNBC, particularly metastatic TNBC, with few treatment options. "There's not a magic bullet target for triple-negative breast cancer ," said Wyatt Wofford, an M.
D., Ph.D.
candidate in the Ogretmen Lab at MUSC and lead author of the article. "Typically, response rates for TNBC are around 15% to 20%, a.