Evaluating and Monitoring Immune and Clinical Responses in Early-Stage Triple Negative Breast Cancer Undergoing Neoadjuvant Chemo-immunotherapy With Pembrolizumab

Primary Objective: I. To determine whether standard of care neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy leads to the induction of a pro-inflammatory cytokine milieu (characterized by high IFN- γ, IFN-α, IL-6 and low TGF-β) in the blood which is induced within 24 hours of treatment initiation, persists through the course of the therapy and is associated with pathologic complete response in the tissue. Secondary Objectives: I. To determine whether the spatially resolved tissue TGF-β induced transcriptomic signatures or lack of innate interferon inducible genes/effector CD8 modules are abundant in tumors from TNBC patients that do not show pathologic complete response in the tissue at the end of standard of care neoadjuvant chemo- immunotherapy.