Two Regimens of SAR240550/Weekly Paclitaxel and Paclitaxel Alone as Neoadjuvant Therapy in Triple Negative Breast Cancer Patients

Primary Objective: - to assess the pathological Complete Response (pCR) rate in the breast of patients treated in following combinations: SAR240550 twice-weekly + weekly paclitaxel, SAR240550 weekly+ weekly paclitaxel, and weekly paclitaxel single agent as calibrator. Secondary objectives are: * pCR rate in the breast and axilla, * Radiological/clinical objective response rate (ORR), breast conservation rate, disease free survival (DFS), and overall survival (OS), in each treatment arm, * Safety profiles of study combinations and of the single agent reference treatment, * Molecular characteristics of the tumor tissue and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and any correlation between the biological activity of the study treatment and the disease outcome. Based on data generated by BiPar/Sanofi, it is concluded that iniparib does not possess characteristics typical of the PARP inhibitor class. The exact mechanism has not yet been fully elucidated, however based on experiments on tumor cells performed in the laboratory, iniparib is a novel investigational anti-cancer agent that induces gamma-H2AX (a marker of DNA damage) in tumor cell lines, induces cell cycle arrest in the G2/M phase in tumor cell lines, and potentiates the cell cycle effects of DNA damaging modalities in tumor cell lines. Investigations into potential targets of iniparib and its metabolites are ongoing.