Triple-negative breast cancer: recent treatment advances

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a breast cancer subtype renowned for its capacity to affect younger women, metastasise early despite optimal adjuvant treatment and carry a poor prognosis. Neoadjuvant therapy has focused on combinations of systemic agents to optimise pathological complete response. Treatment algorithms now guide the management of patients with or without residual disease, but metastatic TNBC continues to harbour a poor prognosis. Innovative, multi-drug combination systemic therapies in the neoadjuvant and adjuvant settings have led to significant improvements in outcomes, particularly over the past decade. Recently published advances in the treatment of metastatic TNBC have shown impressive results with poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors and immunotherapy agents. Immunotherapy agents in combination with traditional systemic chemotherapy have been shown to alter the natural history of this devastating condition, particularly in patients whose tumours are positive for programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1).