Gene Test May Help a few Patients Skip Chemotherapy

Researchers have found that many women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer may be able to forgo adding chemotherapy to a regimen of hormone-blocking meds, without hurting their chances of beating the dreaded disease thanks to gene testing.

A new study has found that a simple gene test reveals which breast cancer patients can skip chemotherapy and which cannot.

Among those observed, 1,626 women had a recurrence score of 0 to 10 and received endocrine therapy alone.

Doctors at Dana Farber Cancer Institute suggested she have a gene activity test called the Oncotype DX to help assess the risk of whether her cancer would come back.

Professor Frédéric Amant, presenting his results at the European Cancer Congress in Vienna, said: ‘Our results show that fear of cancer treatment is no reason to terminate a pregnancy, that maternal treatment should not be delayed and that chemotherapy can be given.

“These patients who had low risk scores by Oncotype [the genetic test] did extraordinarily well at five years”, said Dr. Hope Rugo, a breast cancer specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, with no role in the study.

A previous study published in June 2015 showed that results from the 21-multigene test simultaneously impact treatment decisions by physicians and patients. Doctors tend to rely on the assay when they want more information before deciding whether to recommend chemotherapy to their patients. After five years, about 99 percent had not relapsed, and 98 percent were alive.

“These findings will give women with early-stage breast cancer greater certainty that anti-estrogen therapy will decrease their risk of recurrence and increase their chance for survival whereas chemotherapy will not”, she adds. Also, 94% of patients were free of any invasive cancer including new cancers at other sites or in the opposite breast.

Mammograms showing a normal breast (left) and a breast with cancer (right). But the TAILORx will continue to study women with scores between 11 and 25, which represents a much larger proportion of breast cancer patients (nearly 70% of women in the study fell into this range) as well to determine where the cutpoint for hormone-treatment alone should be.

More than 60 percent of children of mothers with cancer were born earlier than 37 weeks, compared with roughly 8 percent in the general population. Researchers then followed up with the babies more than a year after birth. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof.

NOTE: The Genomic Health logo, Oncotype, Oncotype DX, and Recurrence Score, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Genomic Health, Inc.