HER2 Support Group Forums - View Single Post - Commercially available test helps identify those for whom chemo will work vs not work

Lani · 09-18-2006, 06:10 PM

No. The oncodx test is meant to divide patients with early nonmetastatic(distal) breast cancer that is ER+ without lymph node metastasis into low, medium and high risk groups. A clinical trial is underway to see if chemotherapy can be avoided in the low risk group without endangering the patient with respect to distal metastasis, disease free survival and overall survival. It tests about 21 or 22 genes (via mRNA I believe), three of which are ER, PR and her2.

This test divides patients into high and low risk groups and ostensibly predicts chemotherapy benefit in patients who are ER+ or ER-, Lymph node+ or - . Thus it is applicable to more patients and seems to have been tested ALREADY regarding predicting recurrence after chemotherapy. Larger number of patients need to be tested in a clinical trial.

Hope this helps!

Good news--both tests can be done on paraffin-embedded tumor slices which are kept in the pathology department of the hospital where the surgery was performed. Multigene arrays and some other tests require fresh tissue, and thus cannot be performed retrospectively on paraffin sections.

09-18-2006, 06:10 PM	#4
Lani Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 4,778	Susan w No. The oncodx test is meant to divide patients with early nonmetastatic(distal) breast cancer that is ER+ without lymph node metastasis into low, medium and high risk groups. A clinical trial is underway to see if chemotherapy can be avoided in the low risk group without endangering the patient with respect to distal metastasis, disease free survival and overall survival. It tests about 21 or 22 genes (via mRNA I believe), three of which are ER, PR and her2. This test divides patients into high and low risk groups and ostensibly predicts chemotherapy benefit in patients who are ER+ or ER-, Lymph node+ or - . Thus it is applicable to more patients and seems to have been tested ALREADY regarding predicting recurrence after chemotherapy. Larger number of patients need to be tested in a clinical trial. Hope this helps! Good news--both tests can be done on paraffin-embedded tumor slices which are kept in the pathology department of the hospital where the surgery was performed. Multigene arrays and some other tests require fresh tissue, and thus cannot be performed retrospectively on paraffin sections.