A Brief Overview of Treatment Options for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

Transcript:
Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH: Hello. And welcome to this OncLive® Insight program on treatment approaches in triple negative breast cancer. I'm Dr Aditya Bardia, Medical Oncologist and Director of Breast Cancer Research. Medical Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor at Harvard medical school, Boston Massachusetts. I'm pleased to discuss how I approach treating patients with triple negative breast cancer.

Triple negative breast cancer refers to a sub-type of breast cancer that does not express the estrogen progesterone, the hormonal receptors in HER2. And that's why it's called triple negative because it's negative for ER, PR, and HER2. It's an aggressive sub-type of breast cancer, tends to affect younger women, African Americans, and is associated with higher risk of recurrence and poor prognosis.

Traditionally, triple negative breast cancer has been treated with chemotherapy. Because it does not express ER, PR, HER2, chemotherapy has been the main state of management. However, with the advent of immunotherapy with antibody-drug conjugants, with the therapies like PARP inhibitors, this has changed. Immunotherapy is being utilized now to treat patients with PD-L1 positive triple negative breast cancer. Similarly, antibody-drug conjugants such as Sacituzumab,govitecan, trastuzumab. And deruxtecan are being utilized to treat metastatic triple negative breast cancer. And finally, PARP inhibitors such as olaparib, talazoparib are being used to treat metastatic triple negative breast cancer in patients who have germ line BRCA mutations.

Transcript edited for clarity.