Multi-gene classifiers for prediction of recurrence in breast cancer patients

Accurate prediction of recurrence risk is of vital importance for tailoring adjuvant chemotherapy for individual breast cancer patients. Although recurrence risk has been assessed by means of examination of histological data and biomarkers (ER, PR, HER2, Ki67), such conventional examinations are not accurate enough to select subsets of patients who are at sufficiently low risk of recurrence to be spared adjuvant chemotherapy without comprising the prognosis. In the past two decades or so, comprehensive gene expression analysis technology has rapidly developed and made it possible to construct recurrence prediction models for breast cancer based on multi-gene expression in tumor tissues. These models include MammaPrint, Oncotype DX, PAM50 ROR, GGI, EndoPredict, BCI, and Curebest 95GC. In clinical practice, these multi-gene classifiers are mostly used for ER-positive and node-negative breast cancer patients for whom deciding the indication of adjuvant chemotherapy based on conventional histological examination findings alone is often difficult. This article briefly reviews these multi-gene expression-based classifiers with special emphasis on Curebest™ 95GC, which was developed by us for ER-positive and node-negative breast cancer patients.