Breast Cancer Classification in Flux
 

If you have been paying attention and trying to research anything about this disease you will quickly notice that the staging system is really weird and the types of breast cancer are greater than the four types they keep trying to group everyone into - luminal A, luminal B, HER2, and Triple Negative.

Finally in 2014 one of the main cancer bodies sort of seized on this and have stated, especially in this very early stage of more individualized medicine, the four categories of disease aren't going to cut it.

Those who are triple positive (ER+/PR+/HER2+) are grouped with (HER2+/HR-) all the time in studies and the fact is that we don't get the same treatments nor do we have the same disease responses even when given the same chemo protocol (such as in the case of TCHP where HR-/HER2+ had a slightly greater chance of a PCR but with triple positive you were more likely to have residual cells still).

When we get into genetic testing of live or preserved tumors, or when they test for additional factors influencing metastasis, things like: GATA3, P53, EGR, PIK, etc. and these also change the responsiveness of various chemo treatments.

I found this link about one group that is trying to develop a new classification methology. It seems proprietary to me but perhaps I'm wrong. We might see further development of this system or others in the near future and we as patients should demand it.

Genome-driven integrated classification of breast cancer validated in over 7,500 samples
http://genomebiology.biomedcentral.c...059-014-0431-1