Indications for Prognostic Gene Expression Profiling in Early Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease. While breast cancer mortality has dropped substantially over the past three decades due to early detection and adjuvant systemic therapy (AST), the risk of recurrence is highly dependent upon numerous factors including tumor size, involvement of regional lymph nodes, histologic grade, expression of hormone receptors (estrogen and progesterone), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) amplification. We use these factors to determine which early breast cancer (EBC) patients should be treated with AST, including endocrine therapy (ET), chemotherapy, and HER2-directed treatments. While these factors aid in this determination, it remains challenging to identify those patients unlikely to benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy, resulting in over-treatment of patients. Given this dilemma, there has been great interest in the development of prognostic and predictive gene expression profiles. The most extensively studied profile, the 21-gene recurrence score (Oncotype Dx®), estimates 10-year risk of breast cancer recurrence in patients with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, HER2-negative, node-negative EBC and is likely predictive of chemotherapy benefit. This assay has established analytic validity, clinical validity, and clinical utility for this patient group and, therefore, is indicated in this patient population to help inform decisions regarding administration of adjuvant chemotherapy. Several other assays may have utility in this clinical context or perhaps to identify patients who do not require extended adjuvant ET. These assays include the following: PAM 50 Risk of Recurrence (ROR) Score (Prosigna™), Breast Cancer Index, and EndoPredict®.