Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a biologically heterogeneous disease. Clinically accessible biomarkers remain limited. Objective: To evaluate androgen receptor (AR) expression and immune response—stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (sTILs), CD4+, CD8+, CD4/CD8 ratio—to explore their clinicopathological associations and relationships with 3-year overall survival (OS) in TNBC. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed data from 86 treatment-naïve women with TNBC who were treated between 2012 and 2019 at a single academic center. AR and CD4/CD8 were assessed immunohistochemically; sTILs were scored on H however, inference is limited by the low number of events (10 deaths). Conclusions: AR status was associated with the immune response, particularly with reduced CD8+ infiltration in AR-high tumors, supporting the concept of biologically distinct AR–immune phenotypes. The absence of statistically significant survival associations in adjusted analyses should be interpreted cautiously given the limited event counts, and larger prospective cohorts are needed to validate prognostic and potential therapeutic implications.
Milbrandt et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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