Abstract P1-06-01: Putting multigene signatures to the test: Prognostic assessment in population-based contemporary clinical breast cancer
Authors: Staaf J , Vallon-Christersson J , Häkkinen J , Saal LH , Hegardt C , Larsson C , Ehinger A , Ryden L , Loman N , Malmberg M , Borg Å 
Published: February 2018

Background

Gene expression signatures hold promise for a molecularly driven division of primary breast cancer with clinical implications. A gap still remains in the application/validation of such signatures in actual clinical treatment groups from unselected, population-based, primary breast cancer receiving current standard of care therapy. We analyzed classification proportions and overall survival (OS) of 14 reported gene expression phenotypes (GEPs) and risk predictors (RPs) in seven clinical treatments groups from an 3273-sample breast cancer cohort representative of population-based disease in the South Swedish healthcare region.

Patients and methods

Between 2010-09-01 to 2015-03-31, 5101 (87%) of 5892 patients with invasive primary disease in the healthcare region were included in the SCAN-B study (ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02306096). Inclusion criteria included no generalized/prior contralateral disease and known surgery/treatment status (neo- or adjuvant). 3273 tumors were profiled by RNA sequencing and matched to clinicopathological patient data from the National Breast Cancer Register, with distribution of clinicopathological characteristics reflecting proportions in the catchment region. RNA profiles were classified according to 14 reported gene signatures featuring both GEPs (PAM50, IC10, CIT, TNBCtype) and specific risk predictors (e.g. Oncotype Dx, 70-gene, 76-gene, ROR-variants, genomic grade index). Classifications were investigated for association with patient OS by univariate and multivariate analyses in seven adjuvant clinical treatment groups: TNBC-ACT (adjuvant chemotherapy, n=228), TNBC-untreated (n=83), HER2+/ER- with trastuzumab + ACT treatment (n=101), HER2+/ER+ with trastuzumab + ACT + endocrine treatment (n=210), ER+/HER2- with endocrine treatment (n=1477), ER+/HER2- with endocrine + ACT treatment (n=637), and ER+/HER2- untreated (n=216).

Results

For the majority of signatures, analysis of classification demonstrated prognostic value limited to ER+/HER2- tumors given follow-up time. Several signatures (including Oncotype Dx, 70-gene, ROR-variants) showed strong predictive value in identifying a subset of ER+/HER2- patients receiving a combination of endocrine and ACT therapy with excellent overall survival (&gt;96%), indicating appropriate therapy selection. In addition, for both ER+/HER2- treatment groups signature analysis identified high-risk groups of patients in clear need of additional treatment beyond standard therapeutic regimes, even with less than 5-years of follow-up.

Conclusions

Our results support the prognostic association of gene expression signatures in large unselected population-based primary breast cancer cohorts even with a short follow-up of OS.Importantly, prognostic associations are limited to specific subgroups for different classifiers and in population-based breast cancer some clinically important subgroups constitute a small proportion of cases. In this context, continued population-based inclusion and broad transcriptional profiling of breast cancer patients provides an opportunity for application to broader patient groups (e.g. TNBC and HER2+), and for consensus classification of individual risk assessments that could potentially provide more stable predictions.

Citation Format: Staaf J, Vallon-Christersson J, Häkkinen J, Saal LH, Hegardt C, Larsson C, Ehinger A, Ryden L, Loman N, Malmberg M, Borg Å. Putting multigene signatures to the test: Prognostic assessment in population-based contemporary clinical breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2017 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P1-06-01.