Breast Cancer Case Study

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States and in many other nations of the world (R. Siegel, Miller, & Jemal, 2015). It is characterized by uncontrolled cell growth and invasion of tissues in various parts of our body such as lung, breast, and colon. The American Cancer Society estimates diagnosis of 1,685,210 new cancer cases and 595,690 cancer related deaths in the US in 2016 (R. L. Siegel, Miller, & Jemal, 2016). Breast cancer is identified as a diverse disease in reference to its origins, metastasis, disease progression, and response to treatments (Ossovskaya et al., 2011). Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer related death in women and makes up for almost 249,260 new cancer cases, with approximately 40,890 deaths (R. L. Siegel et al., 2016). The current treatment options for breast cancer include local treatments such as surgery and radiation therapy or systemic treatments such as chemotherapy, hormone therapy, …show more content…
TNBC is characterized by an aggressive clinical course with a poor prognosis (Gluz et al., 2009). Due to the absence of all three hormonal receptors, TNBC do not respond well to targeted receptor treatment’s, which are commonly used in case of other types of breast cancer (De Laurentiis et al., 2016). The current choices for treatment for triple negative breast cancer include chemotherapy, radiation, and combination therapies (Hurvitz & Mead, 2015). These treatments pose several side-effects such as loss of hair follicles, toxicity, damage to healthy cells, and their high costs (Botchkarev, 2003; Du, Osborne, & Goodwin, 2002; Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group, 2005). Due to the difficulty in treating TNBC and the harsh side effects of treatment, there is a need to find naturally available anti-cancer agents with the ability to treat