Targeted therapy and drug resistance in triple-negative breast cancer: the EGFR axis

Sima Lev – Molecular Cell Biology Department, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot (sima.lev@weizmann.ac.il)

Targeting of estrogen receptor is commonly used as afirst-line treatment for hormone-positive breast cancer patients, and is considered as a keystone of systemic cancertherapy. Likewise, HER2-targeted therapy significantly improved the survival of HER2-positive breast cancer patients, indicating that targeted therapy is a powerful therapeuticstrategy for breast cancer. However, for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggres-sive breast cancer subtype, there are no clinically approved targeted therapies, and thus,an urgent need to identify potent, highly effective therapeutic targets. In this mini-review,we describe general strategies to inhibit tumor growth by targeted therapies and brieflydiscuss emerging resistance mechanisms. Particularly, we focus on therapeutic targetsfor TNBC and discuss combination therapies targeting the epidermal growth factorreceptor (EGFR) and associated resistance mechanisms.