Emerging targeted therapeutic strategies for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer

Abstract

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a subtype of breast cancer that lacks expression of oestrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2), has clinical features including a high degree of invasiveness, an elevated risk of metastasis, tendency to relapse, and poor prognosis. It constitutes around 10-15% of all breast cancer, and having heredity of BRCA1 mutated breast cancer could be a reason for the occurrence of TNBC in women. Overexpression of cellular and molecular targets, i.e. CD44 receptor, EGFR receptor, Folate receptor, Transferrin receptor, VEGF receptor, and Androgen receptor, have emerged as promising targets for treating TNBC. Signalling pathways such as Notch signalling and PI3K/AKT/mTOR also play a significant role in carrying out and managing crucial pro-survival and pro-growth cellular processes that can be utilised for targeted therapy against triple-negative breast cancer. This review sheds light on various targeting strategies, including cellular and molecular targets, signalling pathways, poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors, antibody-drug conjugates, and immune checkpoint inhibitors PARP, immunotherapy, ADCs have all found a place in the current TNBC therapeutic paradigm. The role of photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT) has also been explored briefly.

Graphical abstract

Keywords:

• Breast cancer
• tNBC
• tumour targeting
• receptors
• nanocarriers
• molecular targets

Acknowledgements

Dr. Balak Das Kurmi and Dr. Ghanshyam Das Gupta is thankful to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi, India for providing financial assistances in the form of ICMR- Adhoc Research Project. (File No.: 67/05/2022-DDI/BMS; RFC No.: BMS/Adhoc/121/2022-23; IRIS ID: 2021-10997).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.