Chemo-resistant
breast cancer is a major barrier to curative treatment for a significant number of women with
breast cancer.
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) is standard first- line treatment for most women diagnosed with high-risk TNBC, HER2+, and locally advanced ER+
breast cancer. Current clinical prognostic tools evaluate four clinicopathological factors:
Tumor size, LN status, pathological stage, and
tumor molecular subtype. However, many similarly treated patients with identical
residual cancer burden (RCB) following NACT experience distinctly different
tumor relapse rates, clinical outcomes and survival. This problem is particularly apparent for incomplete responders with a high-risk RCB classification following NACT. Therefore, there is a pressing need to identify new prognostic and predictive
biomarkers, and develop novel curative
therapies to augment current standard of care (SOC) treatment regimens to save more lives. Here, we will discuss these unmet needs and clinical challenges that stand in the way of
precision medicine and personalized
cancer therapy.