Abstract
Prognosis of early beast cancer is heterogeneous. Today, no histoclinical or biological factor predictive for clinical outcome after adjuvant anthracycline-based chemotherapy (CT) has been validated and introduced in routine use. Using DNA microarrays, we searched for a gene expression signature associated with metastatic relapse after adjuvant anthracycline-based CT without taxane. We profiled a multicentric series of 595 breast cancers including 498 treated with such adjuvant CT. The identification of the prognostic signature was done using a metagene-based supervised approach in a learning set of 323 patients. The signature was then tested on an independent validation set comprising 175 similarly treated patients, 128 of them from the PACS01 prospective clinical trial. We identified a 3-metagene predictor of metastatic relapse in the learning set, and confirmed its independent prognostic impact in the validation set. In multivariate analysis, the predictor outperformed the individual current prognostic factors, as well as the Nottingham Prognostic Index-based classifier, both in the learning and the validation sets, and added independent prognostic information. Among the patients treated with adjuvant anthracycline-based CT, with a median follow-up of 68 months, the 5-year metastasis-free survival was 82% in the “good-prognosis” group and 56% in the “poor-prognosis” group. Our predictor refines the prediction of metastasis-free survival after adjuvant anthracycline-based CT and might help tailoring adjuvant CT regimens.
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Abbreviations
- CT:
-
Chemotherapy
- IPC:
-
Institut Paoli-Calmettes
- CLB:
-
Centre Léon Bérard
- IB:
-
Institut Bergonié
- SBR:
-
Scarff-Bloom-Richardson
- IHC:
-
Immunohistochemistry
- ER:
-
Estrogen receptor
- PR:
-
Progesterone receptor
- FEC:
-
5-Fluoro-uracile + epirubicine + cyclophosphamide
- PCR:
-
Polymerase chain reaction
- MFS:
-
Metastasis-free survival
- HR:
-
Hazard ratio
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to L. Xerri and C. Mawas for encouragements. We thank F. Bonnet, S. Mathoulin-Pélissier, V. Brouste for their technical assistance and S. Deraco for his help in data analysis. This study was supported in part by Inserm, Institut Paoli-Calmettes, and grants from Programme Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique 2001 (PHRC N° 24-01 FB) and 2003 (N° 24-01 FB), Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer (label DB), Association pour la Recherche sur le Cancer, Fédération Nationale des Centres de Lutte Contre le Cancer and Institut National du Cancer (ACI2004, PL2006, recherche translationnelle). The Biological Resource Centres in Oncology at Institut Paoli-Calmettes and Centre Léon Bérard were supported by grants “Tumorothèques” from the French Ministry of Health and INCa, by grants “Collections 2003” from Inserm and the French Ministry of Research, and by grants “CEBS 2006” from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR).
Conflict of interest
Ipsogen employees: N Borie, JM Le Doussal, S Debono, A Martinec, F Hermitte, V Fert. Ipsogen shareholders: S Debono, F Hermitte, V Fert. The other authors declare they have no competing interest.
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10549_2010_1003_MOESM1_ESM.tif
Supplementary Fig. 1: Kaplan–Meier MFS for patients treated with adjuvant anthracycline-based chemotherapy. a MFS for all 498 patients. b–d MFS in the “good-prognosis group” or the “poor-prognosis group” defined using the genomic predictor; c MFS for all 498 patients; cMFS for 417 patients with N+ cancer; d MFS for 80 patients with N− cancer. HR means hazard ratio for metastasis in the “poor-prognosis group” as compared to the “good-prognosis group.” (TIFF 492 kb)
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Bertucci, F., Borie, N., Roche, H. et al. Gene expression profile predicts outcome after anthracycline-based adjuvant chemotherapy in early breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res Treat 127, 363–373 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-010-1003-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-010-1003-z