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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Apr 24, 2020; 11(4): 169-179
Published online Apr 24, 2020. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v11.i4.169
Narrowing the focus: Therapeutic cell surface targets for refractory triple-negative breast cancer
Narges K Tafreshi, David L Morse, Marie Catherine Lee
Narges K Tafreshi, David L Morse, Department of Cancer Physiology, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL 33612, United States
Narges K Tafreshi, David L Morse, Department of Physics, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33612, United States
Narges K Tafreshi, David L Morse, Marie Catherine Lee, Division of Oncologic Sciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33612 FL, United States
Marie Catherine Lee, Comprehensive Breast Program, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL 33612, United States
Author contributions: Tafreshi NK and Lee MC prepared initial draft of the manuscript; Morse DL contributed in the reviewing and revising the manuscript; Lee MC led the coordination in preparing the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Marie Catherine Lee, FACS, MD, Surgeon, Surgical Oncologist, Comprehensive Breast Program, Moffitt Cancer Center, 12920 N. McKinley Drive, Tampa, FL 33612, United States. m.catherine.lee@moffitt.org
Received: December 30, 2019
Peer-review started: December 30, 2019
First decision: February 20, 2020
Revised: March 25, 2020
Accepted: March 28, 2020
Article in press: March 28, 2020
Published online: April 24, 2020
Processing time: 113 Days and 20.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Triple-negative breast cancer continues to be a challenge in breast cancer therapeutics, as these heterogeneous tumors are refractory to many effective and well-tolerated standard treatments. Even more concerning is the subpopulation of these tumors that progress even on the most aggressive therapeutic regimens. The core of this work reviews the developing approaches for treatment-refractory triple-negative breast cancer and proposes cell-surface targeting as a novel modality for targeted treatment of resistant disease.