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Triple-negative breast cancer in African-American women: disparities versus biology

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 15, pages 248–254 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive breast cancer subtype that disproportionately affects BRCA1 mutation carriers and young women of African origin. There is evidence that African-American women with TNBC have worse clinical outcomes than women of European descent. However, it is unclear whether survival differences persist after adjusting for disparities in access to health-care treatment, co-morbid disease and income. It remains controversial whether TNBC in African-American women is a molecularly distinct disease or whether African-American women have a higher incidence of aggressive biology driven by disparities: there is evidence in support of both. Understanding the relative contributions of biology and disparities is essential for improving the poor survival rate of African-American women with TNBC.

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Figure 1: TNBC in African-American compared with European-American women.
Figure 2: Proposed model of how disparities might drive signalling pathways associated with aggressive biology in TNBC.
Figure 3: Proposed model of genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that link unique DNA sequences and disparities with genomic instability, loss of BRCA1 function and aggressive TNBC biology in women of African descent.
Figure 4: Proposed model depicting the intersection of disparities and aggressive biology in African-American women with TNBC.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by US National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI) grants R01CA155664, R01CA158668, R01CA170851 (to V.L.S.) and CA155664-03S1 (to C.S.), a Susan G. Komen Breast Promise Award (KG091020; to V.L.S.) and a V-Foundation Award (to V.L.S.). This work was also funded by a gift from F. Stanback and A. Stanback. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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  1. Eric C. Dietze, Christopher Sistrunk, Gustavo Miranda-Carboni, Ruth O'Regan and Victoria L. Seewaldt: All authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eric C. Dietze, Christopher Sistrunk and Victoria L. Seewaldt are at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27710, USA.,

    Eric C. Dietze, Christopher Sistrunk & Victoria L. Seewaldt

  2. Gustavo Miranda-Carboni is at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee 90095, USA.,

    Gustavo Miranda-Carboni

  3. Ruth O'Regan is at the Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.,

    Ruth O'Regan

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Dietze, E., Sistrunk, C., Miranda-Carboni, G. et al. Triple-negative breast cancer in African-American women: disparities versus biology. Nat Rev Cancer 15, 248–254 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc3896

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