Molecular Targets in Inflammatory Breast Cancer

Komal L. Jhaveri, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses molecular targets in inflammatory breast cancer (IBC).

Clinical Pearls:

• Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) remains a very aggressive cancer and women with the disease only live for a limited amount of time
• A lack of dedicated IBC trials is preventing researchers and physicians from determining novel pathways to target
• New discoveries about the biology of IBC has led researchers and physicians to understand pathways that are activated in the disease
• Studies have found that the PI3/AKT/mTOR pathway is activated in cell lines with IBC and xenograft models
• Tumor-associated macrophages cause activation of cytokines that leads to upregulation of the JAK-STAT pathway. Upregulation of this pathway leads to cell proliferation and survival
• Results of animal trials have shown overall survival benefit when both the PI3/AKT/mTOR pathway and the JAK-STAT pathway were inhibited