In the United States, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. Characterized by a lack of clinically useful markers associated with other breast cancer subtypes that can direct effective therapeutic interventions, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype with an urgent need for novel and effective therapy strategies. TNBC is also more common in younger, African American, and Hispanic women, posing major challenges as a cancer-related disparity. In patients with localized TNBC, response to chemo and immunotherapy preoperatively is associated with excellent long-term survival while lack of response is linked to a significantly higher risk of metastatic disease...

Read More

In the United States, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. Characterized by a lack of clinically useful markers associated with other breast cancer subtypes that can direct effective therapeutic interventions, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype with an urgent need for novel and effective therapy strategies. TNBC is also more common in younger, African American, and Hispanic women, posing major challenges as a cancer-related disparity. In patients with localized TNBC, response to chemo and immunotherapy preoperatively is associated with excellent long-term survival while lack of response is linked to a significantly higher risk of metastatic disease recurrence in the first 2-3 years. There is an urgent need to develop strategies for early identification of therapy-insensitive tumors, nominate novel and effective therapy strategies for therapy resistant cases, and identify patients who will benefit from therapies with reduced toxicity. To address this critical unmet need, we have established a multidisciplinary team of expert breast oncologic physicians and research scientists and encouraged them to push the boundaries of conventional thinking using the specialized and unique resources available at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Our team assembled a deeply complex and well-annotated clinical, imaging, pathological, treatment response and molecular dataset using the samples available from one of the world's premier precision medicine clinical trials for patients with TNBC (ARTEMIS). We will use a series of informatics and artificial intelligence methods to mine this rich dataset to compose personalized treatment strategies and drug response markers for TNBC patients while reducing the toxicity induced by standard of care therapy. We expect the outcomes of this study will be novel customized treatment strategies that will guide new clinical trials for inducing better outcomes and less therapy-induced toxicity for TNBC patients.

Read Less