TARGETING BREAST CANCER

BY CINDY NGUYEN – What is immunotherapy? Immunotherapy is a general form of treatment used to help boost the body’s immune system. Essentially, it uses the body’s immune system to help fight cancer. Recently, immunotherapy has been given a name for curing cancer therapy. Kidney cancer, leukemia, and various types of lymphoma have all been associated with immunotherapy. In this article, we are going to dive into the ins and outs of immunotherapy and its role in breast cancer treatments. More specifically, we will dive into all that is triple negative breast cancer. According to the CDC, triple-negative breast cancer is a form of cancer that lacks the receptors normally found in cancer. The three receptors target estrogen, progesterone, and a human epidermal growth factor. The average survival rate for patients diagnosed with this form of cancer is 12 to 15 months. In a generic form of cancer, any of these receptors would prove as good targets for different treatments, destroying the cancer cells altogether. However, triple-negative breast cancer has required different approaches in diagnosis.

Recently, researchers conducted a clinical trial for patients diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer whom did not receive any previous treatment. The immunotherapy drug boosts the immune system’s response, while the chemotherapy works to mark the cancer cells, which the immune system later finds and attacks. The overall progress of this trial led to the discovery that this combination has extended a patient’s survival rate by nearly a year, reducing their risk of death by nearly 40 percent. This clinical trial has proven that immunotherapy, combined with chemotherapy, can halt tumor growth and eventually boost the survival rate in people diagnosed with this form of cancer.

LINKS:

https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/triple-negative.

htmhttps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/10/22/triple-negative-breast-cancer-immunotherapy-success-touted-study/1725410002/