Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women worldwide. Metastasis is the leading cause of high mortality in most cancers. Although predicting the early stage of breast cancer before metastasis can increase the survival rate, breast cancer is often discovered or diagnosed after metastasis has occurred. In general, breast cancer has a poor prognosis because it starts as a local disease and can spread to lymph nodes or distant organs, contributing to a significant impediment in breast cancer treatment. Metastatic breast cancer cells acquire aggressive characteristics from the tumor microenvironment (TME) through several mechanisms including epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) and epigenetic regulation. Therefore, understanding the nature and mechanism of breast cancer metastasis can facilitate the development of targeted therapeutics focused on metastasis. This review discusses the mechanisms leading to metastasis and the current therapies to improve the early diagnosis and prognosis in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

Ovarian cancer is the most malignant gynecological tumor. Previous studies have reported that metabolic alterations resulting from deregulated lipid metabolism promote ovarian cancer aggressiveness. Lipid metabolism involves the oxidation of fatty acids, which leads to energy generation or new lipid metabolite synthesis. The upregulation of fatty acid synthesis and related signaling promote tumor cell proliferation and migration, and, consequently, lead to poor prognosis. Fatty acid-mediated lipid metabolism in the tumor microenvironment (TME) modulates tumor cell immunity by regulating immune cells, including T cells, B cells, macrophages, and natural killer cells, which play essential roles in ovarian cancer cell survival. Here, the types and sources of fatty acids and their interactions with the TME of ovarian cancer have been reviewed. Additionally, this review focuses on the role of fatty acid metabolism in tumor immunity and suggests that fatty acid and related lipid metabolic pathways are potential therapeutic targets for ovarian cancer.

Breast cancer remains a common cause of cancer-related death in women. Therefore, further studies are necessary for the comprehension of breast cancer and the revolution of breast cancer treatment. Cancer is a heterogeneous disease that results from epigenetic alterations in normal cells. Aberrant epigenetic regulation is strongly associated with the development of breast cancer. Current therapeutic approaches target epigenetic alterations rather than genetic mutations due to their reversibility. The formation and maintenance of epigenetic changes depend on specific enzymes, including DNA methyltransferases and histone deacetylases, which are promising targets for epigenetic-based therapy. Epidrugs target different epigenetic alterations, including DNA methylation, histone acetylation, and histone methylation, which can restore normal cellular memory in cancerous diseases. Epigenetic-targeted therapy using epidrugs has anti-tumor effects on malignancies, including breast cancer. This review focuses on the importance of epigenetic regulation and the clinical implications of epidrugs in breast cancer.

Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), composed of ionized lipids, helper lipids, and cholesterol, provide general therapeutic effects by facilitating intracellular transport and avoiding endosomal compartments. LNP-based drug delivery has great potential for the development of novel gene therapies and effective vaccines. Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) are derived from physiologically acceptable lipid components and remain robust at body temperature, thereby providing high structural stability and biocompatibility. By enhancing drug delivery through blood vessels, SLNs have been used to improve the efficacy of cancer treatments. Breast cancer, the most common malignancy in women, has a declining mortality rate but remains incurable. Recently, as an anticancer drug delivery system, SLNs have been widely used in breast cancer, improving the therapeutic efficacy of drugs. In this review, we discuss the latest advances of SLNs for breast cancer treatment and their potential in clinical use.

Ovarian tissue cryopreservation is the only option for preserving fertility in adult and prepubertal cancer patients who require immediate chemotherapy or do not want ovarian stimulation. However, whether ovarian tissue cryopreservation can ameliorate follicular damage and inhibit the production of reactive oxygen species in cryopreserved ovarian tissue remains unclear. Oxidative stress is caused by several factors, such as UV exposure, obesity, age, oxygen, and cryopreservation, which affect many of the physiological processes involved in reproduction, from maturation to fertilization, embryonic development, and pregnancy. Here, freezing and thawing solutions were pre-treated with N-acetylcysteine (NAC) and klotho protein upon the freezing of ovarian tissue. While both NAC and klotho protein suppressed DNA fragmentation by scavenging reactive oxygen species, NAC induced apoptosis and tissue damage in mouse ovarian tissue. Klotho protein inhibited NAC-induced apoptosis and restored cellular tissue damage, suggesting that klotho protein may be an effective antioxidant for the cryopreservation of ovarian tissue.

Ovarian cancer (OC) is gynecological cancer, and diagnosis and treatment are continuously advancing. Next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based diagnoses have emerged as novel methods for identifying molecules and pathways in cancer research. The NGS-based applications have expanded in OC research for early detection and identification of aberrant genes and dysregulation pathways, demonstrating comprehensive views of the entire transcriptome, such as fusion genes, genetic mutations, and gene expression profiling. Coinciding with advances in NGS-based diagnosis, treatment strategies for OC, such as molecular targeted therapy and immunotherapy, have also advanced. Immunotherapy is effective against many other cancers, and its efficacy against OC has also been demonstrated at the clinical phase. In this review, we describe several NGS-based applications for therapeutic targets of OC, and introduce current immunotherapeutic strategies, including vaccines, checkpoint inhibitors, and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell transplantation, for effective diagnosis and treatment of OC.