In this episode, we focus on the clinical value of gene expression profiling tests to analyze a number of different genes in breast cancer cells to predict the risk of cancer recurrence, and to provide insight into the biological natural history of the individual tumor. The results of gene expression profiling tests can help determine who may benefit from adjuvant treatment after surgery.
Notably, this year is the 20th anniversary of the 2 seminal papers which showed that gene expression could predict clinical outcomes for breast cancer patients. That 70-gene signature, which later became Mammaprint, was published first in Nature, and then followed up a few months later with survival data in a publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Today we speak with the first author of the most recent New England Journal of Medicine paper, from 2016, demonstrating the clinical value of MammaPrint as a decision aid for early breast cancer, Dr. Fatima Cardoso (Director Breast Unit Champalimaud Clinical Center Lisbon, Portugal). This result from the MINDACT study was followed up in a 2021 Lancet Oncology publication, which provided level 1 evidence of the validity of that 70-gene signature. We also interview Dr. William Audeh (Chief Medical Officer at Agendia BV, CA) to discuss the implications of the MINDACT trial and the added value of the genomic profiling tools MammaPrint and Blueprint. Dr. Audeh also touches upon the FLEX study, which provides whole transcriptome data linked with a clinical database annotated with over 800 clinical characteristics, over 90 sites in USA and > 9K patients enrolled with the ambition to enroll 30K. We also touch upon new data from the I-SPY trial, which indicates that within the high-risk region, there is also information to be gained by stratifying patients into High Risk 1 and 2 categories. Enjoy listening!
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