What is Triple Negative Breast Cancer?
Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive type of invasive breast cancer. This means the cancer cells usually grow and spread faster than other types of breast cancer.
The “triple negative” in its name refers to the fact that the cancer cells do not have estrogen or progesterone receptors or the HER2 protein that you may have heard of with other types of breast cancer.
This type has fewer treatment options and typically has a worse outlook compared to other types of breast cancer.
Who Does it Affect?
According to the American Cancer Society, TNBC accounts for 10-15% of all breast cancers. This cancer tends to be most common in women younger than age 40, Black women, and women who have the BRCA1 mutation, which is an inherited gene that increases your likelihood of developing breast or ovarian cancer throughout your lifetime.
What is the KEYNOTE-522 trial?
KEYNOTE-522 is a phase 3 clinical trial that showed a treatment plan of immunotherapy (Pembrolizumab) with traditional chemotherapy before surgery, in combination with additional immunotherapy after surgery caused significant improvements in life expectancy among early-stage TNBC patients, compared to patients who received chemotherapy alone.
Chemotherapy is used to quickly kill quickly dividing cancer cells in the body. Immunotherapy stimulates the body’s immune system to fight cancer. Both can be given to patients before surgery to shrink a tumor, or after surgery to destroy remaining cancer cells.
Clinical Trial to New Standard of Care
Clinical trials must move through the first three phases of a clinical trial before they can be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and established as a new standard of care.
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the following is what occurs during different phases of a clinical trial:
- Phase 1 determines a safe dose of the treatment, determines how the treatment should be given, and how it affects the body.
- Phase 2 determines how the treatment works for a specific type of cancer or condition and further examines its effects on the body.
- Phase 3 trials compare the new treatment with the current recommended treatment to see which one is better.
- Phase 4 of a trial looks at long-term safety and effectiveness, after the treatment has become available to the public.
Call to Action
Clinical research is dynamic and evolving. It examines different types of treatments of different types of conditions over an extended period of time. Researchers learn more about the treatment as it moves through each phase, even into phase 4 after treatment has become publicly available.
If you are interested in joining a clinical trial, ask your healthcare provider for details about phases of the trial, results thus far, and potential outcomes and risks.
Resources
American Cancer Society. (n.d.). Treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/breast-cancer/treatment/treatment-of-triple-negative.html
Schmid, P., Cortés, J., Dent, R., McArthur, H., Pusztai, L., Kümmel, S., Denkert, C., Park, Y. H., Hui, R., Harbeck, N., Takahashi, M., Im, S.-A., Untch, M., Fasching, P. A., Mouret-Reynier, M.-A., Foukakis, T., Ferreira, M., Cardoso, F., Zhou, X., … Witzel, I. (2024). Overall survival with pembrolizumab in early-stage triple-negative breast cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 391, 1981–1991. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2409932
National Cancer Institute. (n.d.). How clinical trials work. National Institutes of Health. https://www.cancer.gov/research/participate/clinical-trials/how-trials-work