CASE REPORT article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
This article is part of the Research TopicInflammation, Immunity, and Cancer: New Pathways Towards Therapeutic InnovationView all 35 articles
Neoadjuvant TACE Combined with Chemo-Immunotherapy for Giant Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: A Case Report
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hunan Provincial People's Hospital, Changsha, China
- 2Hunan Cancer Hospital, Changsha, China
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Giant, ulcerated triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) presents major therapeutic challenges. We report a 39-year-old woman with a 14.3 cm ulcerated TNBC (cT4bNxM0) who developed infection after intravenous chemotherapy. To achieve rapid local control, a multidisciplinary team elected to perform transarterial chemoembolization (TACE), followed by systemic chemo-immunotherapy using nab-paclitaxel and the PD-1 inhibitor Toripalimab. This multimodal approach led to marked tumor regression and improvement of skin ulceration, enabling curative surgery with modified radical mastectomy and complex reconstruction. Pathology postoperative showed a complete response (Miller-Payne grade 5, ypT0N0M0). This single case suggests that integrating TACE with multimodal neoadjuvant treatment sequences may be feasible in selected patients with extreme presentations of locally advanced TNBC, particularly in patients with extensive tumor burden or poor tolerance to systemic therapy. The approach may enhance local control and elicit synergistic immune activation, offering a potential paradigm for managing extreme TNBC presentations. Further studies are required to clarify the safety, efficacy, and potential immunomodulatory effects of this approach.
Keywords: case report, Pathological complete response, Systemic Chemo-Immunotherapy, Transarterial chemoembolization, Triple-negative breast cancer
Received: 05 Nov 2025; Accepted: 06 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Tan, Li, Li, Kang, Xiang and Yan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hua Xiang
Peng Yan
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