Abstract
Neoadjuvant therapy in breast cancer refers to systemic therapy administered prior
to definitive surgery. It was originally developed for patients with locally advanced
breast cancer (stage III) with the intention of downstaging unresectable tumors, and
decreasing the extent of surgical intervention, including axillary lymph node dissection.
For patients with inflammatory breast cancer, neoadjuvant therapy is considered a
standard of care. Increasingly, the neoadjuvant setting is being utilized to accelerate
drug development and approval in triple negative breast cancer, a diverse and aggressive
subgroup for which no approved targeted therapies are currently available. This review
discusses the use of pathologic complete response as a clinical trial endpoint, the
use of imaging and biomarkers to predict response to therapy, and standard of care
treatment for triple negative breast cancer. Finally, we review novel targets and
drug trials in the neoadjuvant setting.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 03, 2020
Accepted:
July 1,
2020
Received in revised form:
June 28,
2020
Received:
October 29,
2019
Identification
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