![Dr Jonathan Banks Programme Manager: The Discovery Research Programme Centre for Academic Primary Care NIHR School for Primary Care Research School of Social and Community Medicine University of Bristol Bristol BS8 2PS](https://medicalresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/dr_jon_banks.jpeg)
![Dr Jonathan Banks Programme Manager: The Discovery Research Programme Centre for Academic Primary Care NIHR School for Primary Care Research School of Social and Community Medicine University of Bristol Bristol BS8 2PS](https://medicalresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/dr_jon_banks.jpeg)
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Peter Mazzone MD, MPH Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine Cleveland Clinic Main Campus Cleveland, OH 44195 MedicalResearch.com: What are the...
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Hiroko Masuda MD
Morgan Welch Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Program and Clinic; Departments of 2Breast Medical Oncology, 3Bioinformatics and Computational Biology The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas;
W. Fraser Symmans, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Department of Pathology, Unit 85, 1515 Holcombe Blvd., Houston, TX 77030-4009;
Naoto T. Ueno, MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd., Unit 1354, Houston, TX 77030.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Answer: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) could be classified into 7 subtypes: basal-like 1 (BL1), basal-like 2 (BL2), immunomodulatory (IM), mesenchymal (M),mesenchymal stem-like (MSL), luminal androgen receptor (LAR), and unstable (UNS). Using cluster analysis, Lehmann and Bauer et al. identified these TNBC subtypes in 21 public mRNA gene expression profiles of breast cancer. However, the clinical relevancy of these novel molecular subtypes has not been established. To establish the clinical relevancy, we determined if the subtypes of TNBC have different rates of pathological complete response (pCR) to standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimens. In this study, we confirmed that TNBC is heterogeneous and that pCR differs by TNBC subtype using the algorithm proposed by Lehmann and Bauer et al. The BL1 subtype had the highest pCR rate (52%), and BL2 and LAR had the lowest pCR rates (0% and 10%, respectively). TNBC subtype was an independent predictor of pCR status (P=0.022) via a likelihood ratio test. To our knowledge, this was the first study to show that the TNBC subtype can serve as an independent predictor of pCR status in patients who received standard chemotherapy regimens. This confirms the possible clinical relevance of the 7 molecular subtypes, and these subtypes may lead to innovative clinical trials of personalized medicine for patients with TNBC. (more…)