BCC 2021 | Genomic testing in early breast cancer: MammaPrint & BluePrint
Genomic testing in early-stage breast cancer can give useful insights above and beyond the clinical and pathological features. Several gene signature tests are available that can help predict disease prognosis and treatment responsiveness. Miranda Kleijn, PhD, Agendia, Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses two of these tests: MammaPrint and BluePrint. MammaPrint is a 70-gene test that predicts the risk of recurrence, categorizing patients as low or high risk. Analyzing 80 genes, BluePrint is a microarray-based test that identifies the underlying biology of an individual breast cancer for accurate subtyping. This interview took place during the 17th St. Gallen International Breast Cancer Conference.
Transcript (edited for clarity)
For patients that are diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer, the physician looks at a lot of clinical factors such as the size of the tumor, and also hormone receptor status to help make the decisions for a treatment plan. With genomic testing, that can help the physician make a more complete story for the tumor. So then you have besides the clinical pathological factors, you also have genomic factors...
For patients that are diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer, the physician looks at a lot of clinical factors such as the size of the tumor, and also hormone receptor status to help make the decisions for a treatment plan. With genomic testing, that can help the physician make a more complete story for the tumor. So then you have besides the clinical pathological factors, you also have genomic factors.
We have MammaPrint and BluePrint test for that. The MammaPrint test is a risk of recurrence test that analyzes 70 genes that are important in the metastasis of the breast cancer. It looks at the breast cancer or predicts the breast cancer risk, risk of recurrence. And it can classify the tumor in a high risk or a low risk of recurrence. With a low risk of recurrence, we have shown that you can leave out chemotherapy from the treatments and it will not affect the long-term outcome.
BluePrint is an 80 gene molecular assay, which goes beyond what you see on the surface of the tumor cell. So it also detects the activity of 80 genes, and then you can see more into the underlying biology of the tumor. It enables accurate subtyping of the tumor cells. So BluePrint can classify the tumor into three subtypes, a luminal type, HER2 type, and a basal type tumor. Based on that information, you can look at the long-term prognosis and the responses to systemic therapy.
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