Another Tool to Help Breast Cancer Patients Avoid Chemotherapy

Identifying patients with early-stage breast cancer for whom adjuvant chemotherapy will provide little benefit and only add toxicity has been a long-standing goal of oncologists. To evaluate the utility of adding a 70-gene signature (MammaPrint) to standard clinical-pathological criteria in selecting patients for adjuvant chemotherapy, European investigators conducted a randomized, phase III study (EORTC 10041/BIG 3-04 MINDACT) of 6693 women with early-stage breast cancer. Of these, 79% were node-negative, 20.9% had one to three positive axillary nodes, 88.4% were estrogen-receptor positive and/or progesterone-receptor positive, and 9.5% were HER2-positive. Clinical risk for recurrence was assessed using a modified version of Adjuvant! Onli…