What is triple negative breast cancer?

Triple negative breast cancer refers to three types of hormones in the human body, namely estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and epithelial cell growth factor. These three are the key to judging breast cancer. Triple negative breast cancer mainly occurs in young women under 40 years old, and malignant lesions are relatively common. The symptoms of triple-negative breast cancer are mainly caused by abnormal secretion of sex hormones. Everyone can understand its causes.

What is triple-negative breast cancer

The so-called "triple negative" means that this type of breast cancer patients do not express estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epithelial cell growth factor receptor 2 (HER2).

Triple-negative breast cancer is common in young women under 40 years old, accounting for 15%-25% of all breast cancer types.

Characteristics of triple-negative breast cancer

The tumor pathological histological grading of triple-negative breast cancer is relatively poor, the malignancy is particularly high, and the tumor tissue grows very quickly. Simply put, its cancer cells are particularly easy to metastasize to other tissues of the body through the blood or lymph, mainly manifesting as visceral metastasis (lung metastasis, liver metastasis or brain metastasis).

The "Seven Deadly Sins" of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

The reason why triple-negative breast cancer is so scary is because of its "seven sins"

1. The age of onset is low, and it is more common in women under 40 years old;

2. Poor differentiation, high invasiveness, and easy to metastasize to internal organs;

3. It is easy to relapse, and the peak period of relapse is generally within 1-3 years;

4. The overall survival rate is poor;

5. The survival period is 1-2 years. If the median survival period after metastasis is only one year;

6. Treatment options are limited, and there are currently no approved targeted treatments;

7. Tumor mutation frequency is high, disease mechanism research is difficult, treatment efficacy is poor, and drug resistance is prone to occur.

To sum up triple-negative breast cancer, the enemy is powerful, but the weapons are limited.

The enemy is very powerful. Now everyone knows that this disease is highly malignant. Once it occurs, it progresses rapidly. The tumor is prone to early recurrence and metastasis. After surgical resection, the local recurrence rate is not as good as other breast cancers, and the probability of metastasis is very high. And it is difficult to assess the prognostic effect.

The weapons are very limited, which is reflected in the fact that the effects of local and systemic treatments are not ideal. Currently, the most commonly used local treatment is surgical treatment, and the local recurrence rate and regional lymph node metastasis rate of patients with triple-negative breast cancer after surgical treatment are higher than those of ordinary breast cancer.

In addition, the "triple-negative" characteristics of triple-negative breast cancer mean that existing endocrine therapy and molecular targeted therapy are ineffective for triple-negative breast cancer.

However, as humans gain a deeper understanding of triple-negative breast cancer, we believe that more meaningful prognostic methods and targeted treatments for triple-negative breast cancer will be discovered in the future. The difficult triple-negative breast cancer can also be effectively controlled or even cured!