Breast Cancer Types

Triple negative breast cancer is actually defined by what it's not. The tumor tissue does not over-express the hormones estrogen or progesterone (ER/PR) and also doesn't over-express the oncogene Her2/neu. There are targeted treatments available to block the estrogen receptor (ie: Tamoxifen, etc) and also targeted therapies to inactivate the Her2/neu oncogene (ie: Herceptin & Tykerb). These targeted therapies are not options for those with triple negative breast cancer. This means that chemotherapy agents are the primary treatment for those patients. Much of the medical literature indicates that triple negative breast cancers have a better response to chemotherapy but also have a higher recurrence rate in the years immediately following initial treatment. Triple negative breast cancers tend to be more aggressive in nature, are more common in younger women, and appear to be more common in African American women.

The term triple negative just refers to those three specific markers, not to other specifics of the cancer. Breast cancer is also defined as either ductal, lobular, mucinous, inflammatory, or other such distinctions. All of these types of breast cancer can be triple negative.

Triple negative breast cancers are receiving more attention in the research community and hopefully there will be specific drugable targets identified in this tumor group to improve prognosis.

Metastatic breast cancer means that the breast cancer has spread outside of the breast and outside of the underarm (axillary) lymph nodes. The most common sites of spread are to lymph nodes above the clavicle, in the chest, and to the lung, liver, bones, and brain. Metastatic breast cancer, or Stage IV breast cancer, is not considered curable, but modern treatments do allow for much longer survival with a better quality of life than older treatment regimens.

BrCa 1 is more often associated with estrogen and progesterone receptor protein NEGATIVE tumors and are also more often her-2-neu negative (triple negative) than tumors seen in sporadic (non hereditary) breast cancer. BrCa 2 tumors are more like sporadic breast cancers in their molecular signatures.