Comparison of Genomic Profiling Data with Clinical Parameters: Implications for Breast Cancer Prognosis

Simple Summary: Around 20 years ago, genomic profiling of breast carcinomas identified tumor subtypes with clinical implications and opened the door for a better understanding of breast cancer biology. The commercialization of multigene tests had a significant impact on clinical practice, and yet, controversy exists as to which methodology is best to inform the choice of therapy and existing recommendations are inconsistent and often driven by cost-effectiveness. Here we report data from a cohort of breast cancer patients in which pathological and molecular subtyping are directly compared in a clinical setting. The findings show that some patients with genomic low-risk tumors could receive unnecessary systemic therapy if only following the classical clinical parameters, while others could remain under-treated. This study suggests that to design precise treatment regimens for patients with early breast cancer, the conventional clinicopathological classification should be complemented with the robust prognostic information provided by molecular subtyping. Precise prognosis is crucial for selection of adjuvant therapy in breast cancer. Molecular subtyping is increasingly used to complement immunohistochemical and pathological classification and to predict recurrence. This study compares both outcomes in a clinical setting. Molecular subtyping (MammaPrint(R), TargetPrint(R), and BluePrint(R)) and pathological classification data were compared in a cohort of 143 breast cancer patients. High risk clinical factors were defined by a value of the proliferation factor Ki67 equal or higher than 14% and/or high histological grade. The results from molecular classification were considered as reference. Core needle biopsies were found to be comparable to surgery samples for molecular classification. Discrepancies were found between molecular and pathological subtyping of the samples, including misclassification of HER2-positive tumors and the identification of a significant percentage of genomic high risk T1N0 tumors. In addition, 20% of clinical low-risk tumors showed genomic high risk, while clinical high-risk samples included 42% of cases with genomic low risk. According to pathological subtyping, a considerable number of breast cancer patients would not receive the appropriate systemic therapy. Our findings support the need to determine the molecular subtype of invasive breast tumors to improve breast cancer management.

Automated summary

This study compares the results of pathological and molecular subtyping in breast cancer patients and finds discrepancies between the two. The study suggests that traditional clinical pathological classification may lead to unnecessary or inadequate treatment for some patients. Therefore, molecular subtyping should be used in conjunction with clinical pathological classification to design precise treatment regimens for patients with early breast cancer.