New research progress of microwave ablation in the local precise treatment of early-stage breast cancer: the prospect of combined immunotherapy is promising

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor in women. Surgery is the main treatment for early breast cancer. At present, great progress has been made in the diagnosis and treatment of early breast cancer. Howover, innovative approaches are still needed to reduce trauma and improve patients' outcomes. With the progress of innovative research on the treatment of breast cancer, non-surgical treatment of breast and axilla has become a research hotspot of treatment of early breast cancer. Microwave ablation, as a minimally invasive and precise local treatment, has the characteristics of speedy ablation, simple operation method, less postoperative complications and so on. At present, microwave ablation has been used to treat early breast cancer, and has achieved clinical efficacy. In addition, some studies have been reported that microwave ablation of early breast cancer is conducive to regulating the tumor immune microenvironment and stimulating the antigen-specific anti-tumor immune effect in the body. This immune effect may be related to the massive release of tumor antigen after microwave ablation. The effect of immunotherapy alone for breast cancer is poor. Some researchers have proposed a scheme to enhance the ablation immune effect through combined immunotherapy, but its specific effect still needs more clinical data support. With more and more research on the immune effect induced by ablation therapy, microwave ablation combined with immune checkpoint inhibitor is expected to become a new strategy in the precise treatment of breast tumor. This article summarized the new progress and future development direction of microwave ablation in local precise treatment of breast cancer.

Keywords

• |breast cancer|local therapy|microwave ablation|immunotherapy