Immunotherapy Approaches in Breast Cancer Treatment

Dear Colleagues,

Breast cancer (BC) is the second leading cause of female cancer death in the U.S. BC is heterogeneous in nature and the different subtypes of BC show considerable variability in clinical behavior, histologic features, and biological properties. Genetic and/or epigenetic defects in BC cells lead to the development of immunosuppressive environment and tumor escape from immune surveillance.

Recently, immunotherapy has been emerging as an exciting new treatment option for BC, especially for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). While TNBC is more likely to respond to immunotherapy, the overall response rate is still low. Thus, developing more efficacious antitumor immune drugs and rational combination solutions is critical for improving the clinical outcomes of immunotherapy in BC. BC is historically regarded as an immunologically quiescent (cold) tumor. We are facing many challenging issues in BC immunotherapy. We need to better understand how diverse tumor microenvironment contributes to immunotherapy resistance and identify unique biomarkers in order to optimize the combination of immunotherapy with other therapies.

The goal of this Special Issue is to bring basic scientists and clinical investigators together to explore problems and challenges regarding BC immunotherapy. Special considerations would be given to findings of new mechanisms of tumor immune microenvironment, immune evasion, immune cell functions, immunotherapy resistance, and novel combination strategies in BC. We expect that this topic would provide new insight into BC biology and facilitate innovative approaches to improve the outcomes of immunotherapy in breast cancer.

Dr. Yi Huang
Prof. Dr. Bing Li
Guest Editors

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