Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) refers to breast cancer that does not express the genes for progesterone receptor (PR), estrogen receptor (ER), and Her2neu. TNBC presents more aggressively than other breast cancer subtypes, with a shorter disease-free and overall survival. Currently, chemotherapy is the only treatment for this patient population. Although chemotherapy has shown to increase disease-free and overall survival, the ideal chemotherapy regimen is still elusive. It has been established that a platinum-based regimen is beneficial in TNBC, however, other chemotherapy options include taxane type regimens such as nab-paclitaxel. One remaining question is the benefit that patients might derive from the anthracycline portion of the chemotherapy. As chemotherapy has shown to benefit patient survival, this project aims to investigate the importance of anthracycline-based chemotherapy in TNBC.

Through use of data collected from TNBC patients in Ontario via the ICES (Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences) platform and our own database at WRH Cancer Centre, this project will use the data to perform a Kaplan Meier analysis for significant differences in patient outcomes between anthracycline based and non-anthracycline based chemotherapy.