Living with cancer of any kind can be frightening and confusing, not only for the person living with it, but for their loved ones as well. The sacrifices that have to be made, the long nights and long days, the feeling of never getting better, and the fear that this disease may overcome the person battling it. A lot changes for people living with cancer, especially for people living with triple-negative breast cancer. Though society has progressed, can it truly be said that there have been many breakthroughs in research for people dealing with breast cancer? Well in some instances yes, especially with this new technology and treatment that has been recently discovered. This huge positive can change the future for people living with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
If you aren’t familiar with triple-negative breast cancer, here’s what it is. Triple-negative breast cancer is breast cancer with cells that have no estrogen or progesterone receptors.
These types of cancer cells also make either too much protein or don’t make any protein (HER2) at all. TNBC makes up for about 15% of all breast cancer cases.
Triple-negative is most commonly seen in women who are Black, under the age of 40 years old, or have a BRCA1 mutation.
Triple-negative breast cancer is a lot different from other breast cancers because of how fast it spreads and grows. It affects patients differently and has the tendency to reject treatment. It’s also different from other types of breast cancer because it has very few options for treatment and it tends to have a bad outcome.
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The reason why triple-negative breast cancer is so concerning is because of how fast it moves in the body and the few resources and treatments out there to fight it. Being that it is such an aggressive form of cancer and how strongly it affects people, it’s no wonder why researchers have been trying to figure out how to fight it.
After ages of trying to find other types of treatment, thankfully something has finally been discovered. As of recently, there have been a few more discoveries of different types of treatment that TNBC patients can use since their resources are so limited compared to other cancer patients.
A few of these new types of treatments are Immunotherapy (not new but altered to better help TNBC patients), PARP Inhibitors, and Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADC).
The most recent form of therapy that researchers have found that will work for triple-negative breast cancer patients is PARP Inhibitors. The PARP inhibitors are drugs that impose “catastrophic” DNA damage on cancer cells that do not have BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are DNA genes that help repair a cell.
Between the years 2017 and 2018, two types of therapies were approved for metastatic breast cancer. These two therapies were Talzenna (talazoparib) and Lynparza (olaparib).
Once they were approved for metastatic breast cancer, the two therapies and the findings on both of them were taken to the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in 2021 because of the research that showed that these two drugs would work well for people living with triple-negative breast cancer.
ADC (antibody-drug conjugates) was another recent therapy finding as well. In 2020, the drug Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan) was approved for metastatic TNBC. This drug has an antibody that attaches to Trop2, which is found often in breast cancer cells. It helps drugs habitat on tumors through “cancer-cell specific antibodies”.
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It’s amazing that researchers have found other options for TNBC patients because this means that they are being given more opportunities to fight. Since these therapies have come out and are showing signs of actually working, this gives researchers and scientists the chance to continue perfecting and finding new treatments for TNBC patients.
These new therapies open so many doors. For example, it helps lower the risk of this type of cancer worsening. These therapies can also lead researchers to find ways to prevent TNBC or even catch it early before it gets aggressive. The future is looking extremely bright for those living with triple-negative breast cancer and thankfully it’s going to get even brighter.
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