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REVIEW article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Breast Cancer
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1469982
The interplay between the immune response and neoadjuvant therapy in breast cancer
Provisionally accepted- 1Laboratoire d'Immunologie Moléculaire, Institut Jules Bordet, Université libre de Bruxelles, Anderlecht, Brussels, Belgium
- 2Department of Oncology-Pathology, Karolinska Institutet (KI), Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden
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Treatment of early breast cancer is currently experiencing a rapid evolution because of important insight into tumor subtypes and continuous development and improvement of novel therapeutics. Historically considered non-immunogenic, breast cancer has seen a paradigm shift with increased understanding of immune microenvironment, which have revealed extensive heterogeneity in tumorassociated inflammation. Notably, the more aggressive breast cancer subtypes, including triplenegative and HER2-positive have exhibited favorable responses to combined chemo-immunotherapy protocols. Neoadjuvant therapy has emerged as the standard of care for these tumors with pathological complete response used as a surrogate endpoint for long-term clinical outcomes, and coincidently expediting new drug approval. The neoadjuvant setting affords a unique opportunity for in vivo treatment response evaluation and effects on the tumor microenvironment. In this review, the predictive and prognostic value of the tumor immune microenvironment before, during and after treatment across various therapeutic regimens, tailored to distinct breast cancer subtypes, is carefully examined.
Keywords: breast cancer, Neoadjuvant treatment, immune microenvironment, tumor infiltrating lymfocytes, immune response, biomarker, multiomics Font: (Default) Times New Roman Font: (Default) Times New Roman Font: (Default) Times New Roman Font: (Default) Times New Roman Font: (Default) Times New Roman
Received: 12 Sep 2024; Accepted: 16 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Thomas, Foukakis and Willard-Gallo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Noémie Thomas, Laboratoire d'Immunologie Moléculaire, Institut Jules Bordet, Université libre de Bruxelles, Anderlecht, Brussels, Belgium
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.