The Progressive Journey from Ductal Carcinoma in situ into Invasive Breast Cancer: An Extensive Systematic Literature Review on Biomarkers

Breast Cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in women, and second most cancer worldwide. It is a progressive and fatal disease that affects women of all ages, and is divided into several subtypes with distinct histological, genomic and transcriptomic profiles, outcomes, and responses to therapy. Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a pre-invasive stage in the development of invasive breast carcinoma. DCIS presents a clinical problem, with high risk of potential progressive disease. A subset of patients with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) will develop Invasive Breast Cancer (IBC). Thus, biomarkers are pivotal important to help identify DCIS/ IBC genes that might probably lead to potential rational treatment therapies. While biomarkers are defined as indicators of normal biological processes, pathogenic processes, or pharmacologic responses to therapeutic intervention, cancer biomarkers provide diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic information about a particular cancer and show their ever-increasing importance in early detection and diagnosis of the disease. Estrogen Receptor (ER), Progesterone Receptor (PR), antigen KI-67 (Ki67), Her2, and cytokeratin’s are among the approved biomarkers by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for disease diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy selection. Up to now, little is known/or there is still a lot to know about molecular biomarkers (BM) that may help to determine the likelihood that DCIS identified on diagnostic biopsy would remain contained in situ or become invasive. This review elaborates and emphasizes on biomarkers that have the potential to identify cancer progression, and it enlightens research in breast cancer biomarkers related to DCIS and IBC.