产后乳腺癌（PPBC）是乳腺癌的一个独特亚型，占产后诊断的女性的近一半。由于其独特的伤口愈合炎症特征，乳腺退化被广泛认为是 PPBC 发生和进展的关键协调者。在这里，我们提供的对话表明，由于无菌性炎症，哺乳也可能促进肿瘤的发展。免疫细胞参与产后乳腺发育的所有阶段。有人提出，这些免疫细胞的功能部分由乳腺上皮细胞（MEC）及其产生的细胞因子指导。这表明，旨在评估 MEC 内先天免疫通路激活的更利基的探索领域可以深入了解免疫细胞对乳腺发育的贡献。免疫细胞对青春期发育和乳腺复旧的贡献已得到广泛研究；然而，对怀孕和哺乳期的调查仍然有限。怀孕期间，乳腺急剧扩张，为哺乳做准备。因此，MEC 很容易受到复制压力的影响。在哺乳期间，线粒体被推至有能力满足产奶的高能量需求。这种复制和代谢压力如果得不到解决，可能会引发分化 MEC 内先天免疫通路的激活。在这篇综述中，我们广泛讨论了产后乳房发育和免疫细胞对每个发育阶段的贡献的当前知识，同时还强调了一个更独特的研究领域，这将有助于发现 PPBC 的新型治疗生物标志物。© 2024。作者（s）。

Postpartum breast cancer (PPBC) is a unique subset of breast cancer, accounting for nearly half of the women diagnosed during their postpartum years. Mammary gland involution is widely regarded as being a key orchestrator in the initiation and progression of PPBC due to its unique wound-healing inflammatory signature. Here, we provide dialogue suggestive that lactation may also facilitate neoplastic development as a result of sterile inflammation. Immune cells are involved in all stages of postnatal mammary development. It has been proposed that the functions of these immune cells are partially directed by mammary epithelial cells (MECs) and the cytokines they produce. This suggests that a more niche area of exploration aimed at assessing activation of innate immune pathways within MECs could provide insight into immune cell contributions to the developing mammary gland. Immune cell contribution to pubertal development and mammary gland involution has been extensively studied; however, investigations into pregnancy and lactation remain limited. During pregnancy, the mammary gland undergoes dramatic expansion to prepare for lactation. As a result, MECs are susceptible to replicative stress. During lactation, mitochondria are pushed to capacity to fulfill the high energetic demands of producing milk. This replicative and metabolic stress, if unresolved, can elicit activation of innate immune pathways within differentiating MECs. In this review, we broadly discuss postnatal mammary development and current knowledge of immune cell contribution to each developmental stage, while also emphasizing a more unique area of study that will be beneficial in the discovery of novel therapeutic biomarkers of PPBC.© 2024. The Author(s).