Current Progresses and Challenges of Immunotherapy in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

Karan Mediratta; Sara El-Sahli; Vanessa D'Costa; Lisheng Wang

doi:10.3390/cancers12123529

Current Progresses and Challenges of Immunotherapy in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

Cancers (Basel). 2020 Nov 26;12(12):3529. doi: 10.3390/cancers12123529.

Authors

Karan Mediratta^{1

2

3}, Sara El-Sahli^{1

2

3}, Vanessa D'Costa^{1

2}, Lisheng Wang^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, 451 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON K1H 8M5, Canada.
² Centre for Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, University of Ottawa, 451 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON K1H 8M5, Canada.
³ Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology, University of Ottawa, 451 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON K1H 8M5, Canada.

Abstract

With improved understanding of the immunogenicity of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), immunotherapy has emerged as a promising candidate to treat this lethal disease owing to the lack of specific targets and effective treatments. While immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) has been effectively used in immunotherapy for several types of solid tumor, monotherapies targeting programmed death 1 (PD-1), its ligand PD-L1, or cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) have shown little efficacy for TNBC patients. Over the past few years, various therapeutic candidates have been reviewed, attempting to improve ICI efficacy on TNBC through combinatorial treatment. In this review, we describe the clinical limitations of ICI and illustrate candidates from an immunological, pharmacological, and metabolic perspective that may potentiate therapy to improve the outcomes of TNBC patients.

Keywords: cancer metabolism; cancer nanomedicine; chimeric antigen receptor; combination therapy; immune checkpoint inhibitor; immunotherapy; triple-negative breast cancer; tumor antigens; tumor microenvironment.

Publication types

Review