New therapeutic targets in inflammatory breast cancer

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is the most lethal variant of locally advanced breast cancer. Although recognized as a distinct clinical entity, there have been few advances in the development of pre-clinical models of IBC, and a lack of IBC-specific therapeutic targets translated into clinical utility to increase overall survival, which is currently 40 % at three years. By use of newly developed pre-clinical models of IBC and patient tumor tissues, E-cadherin, anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), and HSP90 have been identified as targets relevant to IBC that are matched by therapeutics that are either currently in clinical trials or will be tested in clinical trials within the next year. These exciting results illustrate the advances that have been made in recent years in defining the molecular basis of IBC as a distinct disease and the significant strides made in identifying more effective strategies for treatment of patients with IBC. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012.