Breast Cancer: Prognostic Tool for Chemotherapy Response

Currently, a reliable method for identifying breast cancer patients likely to fail therapy and suffer recurrence of the disease does not exist. A prognostic tool that would enable doctors to consider alternate treatments for patients likely to fail standard regimens would be valuable. BIOwulf funded a study based on a sample of 73 patients from which 49 patients had seen no recurrence. The study used 20 variables from preprocessed clinical data such as: progesterone receptors, age, positive lymph nodes and total nodes surgically removed to determine what variables were critical for prediction. Based on clinical data alone, a "diagnostic pattern" was revealed that was able to accurately identify three out of four women who ultimately failed chemotherapy treatment. BIOwulf and its team of scientists expect to improve upon these results through incorporation of genomic and/or proteomic data from the tissues associated with these cases.