Selected inflammatory breast cancer research published in 2015
What is an abstract?
An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding, or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper’s purpose. The abstract can convey the main results and conclusions of a scientific article but the full text article must be consulted for details of the methodology, the full experimental results, and a critical discussion of the interpretations and conclusions.
The abstract below is not edited. Read the free complete article on PubMed Central.
Bertucci, F., et al. (2015). PDL1 expression in inflammatory breast cancer is frequent and predicts for the pathological response to chemotherapy. Oncotarget, 6(15), 13506-19.
We retrospectively analyzed PDL1 mRNA expression in 306 breast cancer samples, including 112 samples of an aggressive form, inflammatory breast cancer (IBC). PDL1 expression was heterogeneous, but was higher in IBC than in non-IBC. Compared to normal breast samples, PDL1 was overexpressed in 38% of IBC. In IBC, PDL1 overexpression was associated with estrogen receptor-negative status, basal and ERBB2-enriched aggressive subtypes, and clinico-biological signs of anti-tumor T-cell cytotoxic response. PDL1 overexpression was associated with better pathological response to chemotherapy, independently of histo-clinical variables and predictive gene expression signatures. No correlation was found with metastasis-free and overall specific survivals. In conclusion, PDL1 overexpression in IBC correlated with better response to chemotherapy. This seemingly counterintuitive correlation between expression of an immunosuppressive molecule and improved therapeutic response may be resolved if PDL1 expression is viewed as a surrogate marker of a strong antitumor immune response among patients treated with immunogenic chemotherapy. In such patients, PDL1 inhibition could protect activated T-cells or reactivate inhibited T-cells and improve the therapeutic response, notably when associated with immunogenic chemotherapy.