Current and Prospective Treatments for Triple Negative Breast Cancer

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly heterogeneous and aggressive subtype of breast cancer characterized by a lack of expression of estrogen receptors (ER), progesterone receptors (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). TNBC accounts for 15-20% of all breast cancers and has the poorest prognosis of all breast cancer subtypes. TNBC is especially challenging to treat because of a lack of well-defined molecular targets, and current treatments for TNBC, especially chemotherapy, often result in resistance, recurrence, and off-target toxicity. A promising solution for these challenges is precision medicine, a therapeutic approach that involves tailoring treatment to the individual patient by identifying the specific mutations driving their disease. This review will explore the current treatment options for TNBC, specifically chemotherapy and immunotherapy, emphasizing the limitations of these common modalities of treatment. Using precision medicine approaches, it may be possible to tailor currently available treatments to individual patients to improve outcomes and lessen side effects. This paper will also address the phenomenon of cancer resistance, one of the key challenges in treating TNBC, and highlight how precision medicine can address this issue.