The newly developed CXCR4 antagonists as a monotherapy or combined with conventional cancer therapies for treatment of breast cancer: A critical analysis

Abstract

Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common types of cancer worldwide, with about 2.26 million cases were recorded in 2020. The treatment choices of BC are limited in surgical resection, radiotherapy, chemotherapy. These treatment strategies are rarely curative; therefore, there are urgently needed for a new drug for BC treatment with high effectiveness and safety level. The signalling axis CXCR4/CXCL12 is essential for the growth, progression and survival of primary and metastatic BC tumours. Therefore, this axis is a potential therapeutic target for BC. To examine if the newly developed CXCR4 antagonist can be used as a monotherapy or in combination with other cancer therapy for the treatment of BC, various studies were found by ScienceDirect and PubMed and critically analysed. Firstly, CXCR4 antagonists were evaluated as a monotherapy, showing an effective anticancer and antimetastatic effect. However, it was found to cause detrimental effects in the TNBC model. Secondly, CXCR4 antagonists were investigated as a combination with radiotherapy (RT) and in another study with eribulin (chemotherapy), which was the first clinical study to assess CXCR4 antagonists for BC treatment. In both studies, CXCR4 synergise the conventional therapy of BC. However, there is a lack of clinical studies in this field; thus, more studies are needed.