Antibody-drug conjugates targeting Trop-2: Clinical developments in early breast cancer therapy

Although breast cancer has a good prognosis compared with various cancers, metastatic breast cancer has an aggressive disease course and remains incurable. Therefore, treatment of early breast cancer to prevent recurrence and metastasis is crucial. Recently, the development of anti-cancer drugs, such as targeted agents and immuno-oncology, has been accelerating. Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are also building a new paradigm. Particularly, ADCs targeting Trop-2 were approved for their efficacy in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer patients who received ≥2 prior systemic therapies and showed significant results in heavily pretreated hormone receptor-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer. In this brief review, we provide an overview of ongoing clinical trials of ADCs targeting Trop-2 in early breast cancer, specifically sacituzumab govitecan.