Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, breast cancer subtypes and therapeutic efficacy.

By analyzing over 2000 samples from a randomized clinical trial, we have recently associated high levels of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes with an excellent prognosis among triple negative breast cancer patients as well with improved clinical responses to immunogenic chemotherapy among patients bearing HER2 over-expression. These findings suggest that immunomodulation could represent a new approach to treat these aggressive breast cancer subtypes.