Multiomics technologies for comprehensive tumor microenvironment analysis in triple-negative breast cancer under neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Gang Wang; Yao Yao; Huanhuan Huang; Jun Zhou; Chao Ni

doi:10.3389/fonc.2023.1131259

Multiomics technologies for comprehensive tumor microenvironment analysis in triple-negative breast cancer under neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Front Oncol. 2023 May 22:13:1131259. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2023.1131259. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Gang Wang¹, Yao Yao^{2

3

4}, Huanhuan Huang^{2

3

4}, Jun Zhou⁵, Chao Ni^{2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Surgical Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, Anhui, China.
² Department of Breast Surgery, Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Tumor Microenvironment and Immune Therapy of Zhejiang Province, Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
⁴ Cancer Center, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁵ Department of Breast Surgery, Affiliated Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.

Abstract

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is one of the most aggressive breast cancer subtypes and is characterized by abundant infiltrating immune cells within the microenvironment. As standard care, chemotherapy remains the fundamental neoadjuvant treatment in TNBC, and there is increasing evidence that supplementation with immune checkpoint inhibitors may potentiate the therapeutic efficiency of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). However, 20-60% of TNBC patients still have residual tumor burden after NAC and require additional chemotherapy; therefore, it is critical to understand the dynamic change in the tumor microenvironment (TME) during treatment to help improve the rate of complete pathological response and long-term prognosis. Traditional methods, including immunohistochemistry, bulk tumor sequencing, and flow cytometry, have been applied to elucidate the TME of breast cancer, but the low resolution and throughput may overlook key information. With the development of diverse high-throughput technologies, recent reports have provided new insights into TME alterations during NAC in four fields, including tissue imaging, cytometry, next-generation sequencing, and spatial omics. In this review, we discuss the traditional methods and the latest advances in high-throughput techniques to decipher the TME of TNBC and the prospect of translating these techniques to clinical practice.

Keywords: multi-omics; neoadjuvant chemotherapy; single-cell analysis; triple-negative breast cancer; tumor microenvironment.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Grant Nos. LR19H160001 and LY21H100004);Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 82073151, 82273275 and 82173089); and Leading Innovative and Entrepreneur Team Introduction Program of Zhejiang (Grant No. 2019R01007).