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REVIEW ARTICLE

Neutrophil extracellular traps: A new frontier in breast cancer prognostics and therapy

Shenting Liu1 ,  Lizhe Wang2*
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1 Department of Family Medicine, Yuanhe Subdistrict Community Health Center of Xiangcheng District, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
2 Department of Oncology, Xiangcheng District Third People’s Hospital, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
Tumor Discovery, 025510126 https://doi.org/10.36922/TD025510126
Received: 15 December 2025 | Revised: 18 March 2026 | Accepted: 14 April 2026 | Published online: 12 May 2026
© 2026 by the Auhor(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Breast cancer has become the most frequently diagnosed malignancy worldwide, and its lethality is driven by cancer cells with high invasiveness, metastatic potential, and resistance to therapy. Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), web-like structures released by activated neutrophils and composed of histones, antimicrobial proteins, and DNA, play crucial roles in tumor metastasis and progression. In recent years, substantial efforts have been devoted to the development and validation of molecular biomarkers. These biomarkers can provide prognostic information and, more importantly, predict response to therapy. Multigene assays are increasingly being incorporated into the routine management of patients with early-stage breast cancer; however, their high cost remains a major barrier to widespread implementation. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop and validate inexpensive, simple prognostic biomarkers. Among low-cost biomarkers, Ki-67 is one of the most widely used; however, inter-laboratory reproducibility of Ki-67 assessment is poor, and there is no universally accepted, clinically actionable cutoff. Emerging evidence increasingly indicates that NETs are closely associated with tumor dissemination, immune modulation, and the reactivation of dormant cancer cells. They are often regarded as significant correlates in the mechanisms of tumor progression. However, their validity as clinically actionable prognostic biomarkers or therapeutic targets in breast cancer remains to be further validated. This review systematically summarizes the molecular mechanisms proposed to link NETs with breast cancer progression and outlines their potential clinical implications within current evidentiary limits.

Keywords
Breast cancer
Neutrophil extracellular traps
Prognostics
Therapy
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Tumor Discovery, Electronic ISSN: 2810-9775 Print ISSN: 3060-8597, Published by AccScience Publishing
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