Pembrolizumab-an Anti-PD-1 Agent In Treatment Of Tripe Negative Breast Cancer: Recent Findings And Next Move

Although the novel checkpoint inhibitors,programmed death-1(PD-1)and/or programmed death-ligand 1(PD-L1)inhibitors were initially used in immunogenic tumors,increasing evidence has shown that patients with aggressive subtypes of breast cancer(BC),such as the triple negative breast cancer(TNBC),could also benefit from them.Previous studies suggest response rates lower than 10% in pretreated patients,and roughly 30% in untreated TNBC patients.Despite the low response rate,these patients often generate durable effects.Combination with chemotherapy and other target therapy also show encouraging results.Accumulating clinical trials are on-going to evaluate novel combination therapies and identify patients who are most likely to benefit from these.In this review,we elaborate the underlaying mechanism of PD-1 pathway in the tumor immunology,and summarize the latest advance of the utilization of pembrolizumab,an anti-PD-1 agent,in treatment of TNBC,which provide a deeper understanding of the clinical effect of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy,and possible future developing direction as well.