{"id":"doi:10.3390/diseases14100367","kind":"article","title":"Immune- and Stromal-Associated Tissue-Context Profiles in Pretreatment Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: An Exploratory Institutional Cohort Study","authors":["Zuccalà V","Staropoli N","Labanca C","Ricciardi G","Tralongo P","Fiorentino V","Procopio E","Renne M","Ieni A","Martini M","Tassone P","Tagliaferri P"],"author_count":12,"year":2026,"published":"2026-10-03","venue":"Diseases (Basel, Switzerland)","cited_by":0,"doi":"10.3390/diseases14100367","arxiv_id":null,"nct_id":null,"source_url":"https://doi.org/10.3390/diseases14100367","archive_url":"https://space-kitty.com/papers/doi:10.3390/diseases14100367","updated":null,"pmid":"42929994","pmcid":"PMC13703652","openalex_id":null,"pdf_url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13703652/pdf","abstract":"Background/objectives We examined combinations of immune- and stromal-associated features in pretreatment triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) biopsies and explored their clinical and germline associations. Methods This retrospective study included 24 women with nonmetastatic TNBC from a clinically selected BRCA1 / BRCA2 -tested cohort. Two pathologists, blinded to clinical and germline data, jointly assessed stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (sTILs), programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), CD68/CD163-positive macrophages, and CD117/tryptase-positive mast cells. Profiles were assigned before unblinding. A second blinded joint sTIL assessment provided continuous estimates for subsequent hierarchical clustering; profile assignments remained unchanged. Results Profiles I-III comprised seven, 13, and four tumors, respectively. Profile I combined higher sTILs and PD-L1 with a CD68-high/CD163-low pattern and rare mast cells. Profile II showed lower sTILs and PD-L1, a CD68-low/CD163-high pattern, and dense mast-cell hotspots; Profile III had minimal sTILs, low macrophage counts, and no mast cells detected in evaluated fields. Clustering reproduced these assignments. All four patients with pathogenic/likely pathogenic germline BRCA1 / BRCA2 variants were in Profile I (adjusted p = 0.030); omitting one positive case at a time increased the adjusted p value to 0.068. Seven of 16 neoadjuvant-treated patients achieved pathologic complete response. Five posttreatment recurrences and seven deaths were recorded; exploratory comparisons of pathologic complete response and overall survival were inconclusive. Conclusions These profiles describe different combinations of lymphocytic infiltration, PD-L1 expression, macrophage counts, and mast-cell hotspots. The profiles and the exploratory BRCA1 / BRCA2 finding require validation in larger, independent cohorts before clinical use.","abstract_license":"CC-BY (article license as recorded by Europe PMC; abstract reproduced unmodified apart from markup removal)","license":"CC-BY","is_open_access":true,"retracted":false,"peer_reviewed":null,"categories":[],"details":null,"provenance":"europepmc","attribution":"Abstract of \"Immune- and Stromal-Associated Tissue-Context Profiles in Pretreatment Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: An Exploratory Institutional Cohort Study\" by Zuccalà V, Staropoli N, Labanca C et al., https://doi.org/10.3390/diseases14100367, used under its Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY); markup removed, otherwise unmodified.","topics":[{"slug":"cancer-immunotherapy","name":"Cancer Immunotherapy","domain_slug":"medicine"}],"cited_in_dossiers":[]}