Breast Cancer Gene Microarrays Pass Muster

Extract

Biology may trump anatomy when it comes to predicting a breast cancer patient's outcome, according to a new study of gene expression tests.

The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine , tested five different gene expression profiles developed within the last six years—two are now commercially available—to answer a big question about these tests: Do independently developed gene screens agree or disagree in predicting outcome for an individual patient?

The research team, led by scientists from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, found that four of the five tests predicted the survival outcomes in a 295-patient Dutch group. More surprisingly, these tests agreed with each other even though each tested a different set of genes (only one gene overlapped between the two commercially available tests). A second analysis found that each of the four gene expression tests performed better at predicting disease-free survival and overall survival than clinical variables.