AuthOr’s VIew AuthOr’s VIew

Breast cancer (BC) has not been tra-ditionally considered as an “immuno-genic ” malignancy. The incidence of BC is not increased among transplanted (i.e., immunosuppressed) vs. non-transplated patients, yet disease outcome has been reported to be worse among the former. Nevertheless, tumor-infiltrating lym-phocytes (TILs) have been consistently documented in BC lesions and have been associated with prognosis. In a seminal paper published in 1992; Aaltoma and colleagues reported that lymphocytic infiltration was associated with a good prognosis, but only among rapidly prolif-erating tumors (i.e., those that manifested a high number of mitoses).1 We have recently evaluated the prog-nostic and predictive value of TILs in a large cohort of newly-diagnosed, primary lymph node-positive BC patients that—in the context of a prospective clinical trial— were randomized to receive either high-dose anthracycline-based chemotherapy or a combinatorial regimen involving anthracyclines and docetaxel.2 The use of tumor specimens archived during clini-cal trials has significant advantages in that (1) the quality of the clinical data are exceptional, (2) patients are treated homogeneously (exception made for the randomization, obviously) and (3) patho-logical features are assessed in a centralized Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, breast cancer subtypes and therapeutic efficacy sherene Lo