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Characterizing Basal-Like Triple Negative Breast Cancer Using Gene Expression Analysis: A Data Mining Approach, Qamar Alsabi

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Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is characterized by the absence of expression of the estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). Therefore, TNBC is unresponsive to targeted hormonal therapies, which limits treatment options to nonselective chemotherapeutic agents. Basal-like breast cancers (BLBCs) represent a subset of about 70% of TNBCs, more frequently affecting younger patients, being more prevalent in African-American women and significantly more aggressive than tumors of other molecular subtypes, with high rates of proliferation and extremely poor clinical outcomes. Proper classification of BLBCs using current pathological tools has been a major challenge. Although TNBCs have …