Closing the recapitulation gap in obesity-conditioned TNBC drug development

Preclinical cancer models do not always recapitulate clinical treatment response, as therapeutic response may depend on tissue context the model does not reproduce. Using obesity-conditioned triple-negative breast cancer as a lens, we argue that the tumor microenvironment acts through dual gates-controlling access and altering behavior-and propose the recapitulation gap as a measurable model-to-patient divergence to guide fit-for-purpose drug development.