Genetic test guides cancer treatment, company says

[News]

Genomic Health Inc said on Thursday its genetic test can helppredict when chemotherapy is likely to benefit women with breastcancer that has spread to the lymph nodes.

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[gdpawel]

The genetic analysis of Oncotype DX predicts which women will have a greater chance of breast cancer recurrence. The test looks at 21 genes that influence the behavior of breast cancer cells.

MammaPrint looks at the expression of 70 genes linked to breast cancer with an accuracy level of 96.7% as determined by a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Mammostrat is validated utilizing five immunohistochemical biomarkers to classify patients into high, moderate, or low-risk categories for disease recurrence.

Until these tests, it had been difficult to pinpoint which women would benefit most from chemotherapy, and those which wouldn’t. These tests enable the oncologist and breast cancer surgeon to more accurately determine who should be treated and who should not be treated with chemotherapy, but they cannot predict chemo response!

Since studies show that only 25-30% of patients do respond to chemotherapy that is available to them (and even less for "targeted" drugs), there should be due consideration to looking at the advantage of molecular and cellular assay tests to the resistance that has been found to chemotherapy drugs.

Patients in the high-risk group, who would benefit from chemotherapy, can then be pre-tested with a "functional" bio-marker (EGFRx™ Anti-Tyrosine Kinase Profile) to see what treatments have the best opportunity of being successful, and offers a better chance of tumor response resulting in survival, while those in the lower-risk groups can be spared the unnecessary toxicity, particularly associated with ineffective treatment.