“…In this context, along with early diagnosis, a great interest has been devoted towards chemopreventive agents, which can be exploited by both healthy and oncological subjects to prevent or repair CS damage, thus limiting the occurrence and aggressiveness of breast cancers. Preclinical studies highlighted the possible benefits of anti-inflammatory drugs, dietary polyphenols and other natural compounds against the oxidative and inflammatory damage by cigarette smoke, however limited evidence about their ability to hinder cancer progression and chemoresistance development is currently available [ 26 , 114 , 115 , 116 , 117 , 118 , 119 ], and the true mechanisms involved remain to be elucidated. In this context, our results provide additional evidence about the mechanisms implicated in the chemoresistance induced by cigarette smoke in triple-negative breast cancer cells, particularly the increased proliferative abilities, probably due to a lowered control in G2/M phase, the promotion of autophagic cell death and migration, along with the STAT3 activation, which seem to be activated as buffering processes to promote the cancer cell resilience to the acute CSC damage, thus resulting in the increased recovery abilities.…”