Living with cancer of any kind can be frightening and confusing, not only for the person living with it, but for their loved ones as well. The sacrifices that have to be made, the long nights and long days, the feeling of never getting better, and the fear that this disease may overcome the person battling it. A lot changes for people living with cancer, especially for people living with triple-negative breast cancer. Though society has progressed, can it truly be said that there have been many breakthroughs in research for people dealing with breast cancer? Well in some instances yes, especially with this new technology and treatment that has been recently discovered. This huge positive can change the future for people living with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
If you aren’t familiar with triple-negative breast cancer, here’s what it is. Triple-negative breast cancer is breast cancer with cells that have no estrogen or progesterone receptors.
These types of cancer cells also make either too much protein or don’t make any protein (HER2) at all. TNBC makes up for about 15% of all breast cancer cases.
Triple-negative is most commonly seen in women who are Black, under the age of 40 years old, or have a BRCA1 mutation.
Triple-negative breast cancer is a lot different from other breast cancers because of how fast it spreads and grows. It affects patients differently and has the tendency to reject treatment. It’s also different from other types of breast cancer because it has very few options for treatment and it tends to have a bad outcome.
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A New Therapy That May Stop TNBC From Worsening
The reason why triple-negative breast cancer is so concerning is because of how fast it moves in the body and the few resources and treatments out there to fight it. Being that it is such an aggressive form of cancer and how strongly it affects people, it’s no wonder why researchers have been trying to figure out how to fight it.
After ages of trying to find other types of treatment, thankfully something has finally been discovered. As of recently, there have been a few more discoveries of different types of treatment that TNBC patients can use since their resources are so limited compared to other cancer patients.
A few of these new types of treatments are Immunotherapy (not new but altered to better help TNBC patients), PARP Inhibitors, and Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADC).
How This New Therapy Will Work
The most recent form of therapy that researchers have found that will work for triple-negative breast cancer patients is