Treatement of cancers
Local Treatements
- 🦚 Surgery for Breast Cancer
- ⚡ Radiation for Breast Cancer
TNBC 🔬
doesn’t have estrogen or progesterone receptors and also makes too little or none of the HER2 protein. Because the cancer cells don't have these proteins, hormone therapy and drugs that target HER2 are not helpful, so chemotherapy (chemo) is the main systemic treatment option. And even though TNBC tends to respond well to chemo initially, it also tends to come back (recur) more frequently than other breast cancers.
Stages I-III triple-negative breast cancer
Surgery first if the tumor is small enough to be removed by the surgery, then breast-conserving surgery or a mastectomy with a check of the lymph node will be done in certain case. such as with a large tumor or if the lymph nodes are found to have cancer, radiation may follow surgery. You might also be given chemo after surgery (adjuvant chemotherapy) to reduce the chances of the cancer coming back. For women who have a BRCA mutation and at surgery are found to have:
- A tumor larger than 2cm but no bigger than 5cm OR
- 1 to 3 axillary (underarm) lymph nodes with cancer
the targeted drug olaparib (Lynparza) might be given for a year after adjuvant chemo. When given this way, it can help some women live longer.
Surgery second: Chemo is often given before surgery (neoadjuvant chemotherapy) by itself or with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to shrink a large tumor and/or lymph nodes with cancer. If cancer is still found in the tissue removed by surgery after neoadjuvant chemo has been given, your doctor may recommend
Stage IV triple-negative breast cancer
Chemo is often used first when the cancer has spread to other parts of the body (stage IV).
Common chemo drugs used include anthracyclines, taxanes, capecitabine, gemcitabine, eribulin, and others. Chemo drugs might be used alone or in combination.
For women with TNBC who have a BRCA mutation and whose cancer no longer responds to common breast cancer chemo drugs, other platinum chemo drugs (like cisplatin or carboplatin) or targeted drugs called PARP inhibitors (such as olaparib [Lynparza] or talazoparib [Talzenna]), may be considered.