Putting the brakes on breast cancer: therapeutic opportunities to bring cancer stem cells and the tumor microenvironment to a screeching halt.

摘要

Despite a recent decline in incidence, breast cancer remains as one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers and the second leading cause of cancer related deaths in American women [1]. There are a number of challenges that impact our ability to effectively treat this disease. First, breast cancer is a heterogeneous collection of diseases that demonstrate diverse histopathologies [2], genomic alterations [3], gene expression patterns [4, 5], clinical features, and therapeutic outcomes [6]. A second major challenge is the lack of treatment options for breast cancers that are inherently resistant or acquire resistance to multiple therapies including cytotoxic, endocrine, and targeted therapies [7-11]. Finally, there is a paucity of treatments that are effective against metastatic breast cancer [12], and thus the majority of patients with metastases will eventually succumb to the disease.