“My grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer at an early age, back in the early 1990s when personalized treatment wasn’t available yet. After surgery, she developed metastases within a few years and passed away before I was born. When I saw that there was a research project on balancing over- and undertreatment in young patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), I thought that this would be exactly what she and many other patients might have needed.
My PhD research focuses on identifying biomarkers associated with favorable TNBC outcomes, such as high tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and an absence of germline BRCA1/2 mutations, to help define which patients can safely avoid chemotherapy and which patients need the treatment. These insights allowed us to update a widely-used breast cancer prognostication model to guide chemotherapy decisions, helping to personalize treatment and potentially save some low-risk TNBC patients from unnecessary chemotherapy. One surprising finding was that the same number of TILs appeared to give a stronger survival benefit in patients with tumor BRCA1 promoter methylation, opening new directions for future research.
I had a wonderful experience doing my PhD at the NKI, where I found close collaborations and lasting friendships. I am now a postdoctoral researcher at Johnson & Johnson, working on federated data analysis for multiple myeloma, and I hope to continue contributing to data-driven improvements in healthcare.”
Yuwei Wang will defend her thesis on February 10.
Research at the Netherlands Cancer Institute is financially supported by KWF Dutch Cancer Society and the AVL Foundation.
Tailored to Fit: Balancing Over- and Undertreatment in Early-Stage Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Patients
Marjanka Schmidt & Sabine Linn