Patent ID: 7514209

Claim:
A method for classifying an individual afflicted with breast cancer as having a good prognosis or a poor prognosis, wherein said individual is a human, wherein said good prognosis indicates that said individual is expected to have no distant metastases within five years of initial diagnosis of breast cancer, and wherein said poor prognosis indicates that said individual is expected to have distant metastases within five years of initial diagnosis of breast cancer, comprising: (i) calculating a measure of similarity between a first expression profile and a good prognosis template, or calculating a first measure of similarity between said first expression profile and said good prognosis template and a second measure of similarity between said first expression profile and a poor prognosis template; said first expression profile comprising the expression levels of a first plurality of genes in a cell sample taken from the individual; said good prognosis template comprising, for each gene in said first plurality of genes, the average expression level of said gene in a plurality of patients having no distant metastases within five years of initial diagnosis of breast cancer; and said poor prognosis template comprising, for each gene in said first plurality of genes, the average expression level of said gene in a plurality of patients having distant metastases within five years of initial diagnosis of breast cancer; said first plurality of genes consisting of at least 5 of the genes for which markers are listed in Table 5; (ii) classifying said individual as having said good prognosis if said first expression profile has a high similarity to said good prognosis template or has a higher similarity to said good prognosis template than to said poor prognosis template, or classifying said individual as having said poor prognosis if said first expression profile has a low similarity to said good prognosis template or has a higher similarity to said poor prognosis template than to said good prognosis template; wherein said first expression profile has a high similarity to said good prognosis template if the similarity to said good prognosis template is above a predetermined threshold, or has a low similarity to said good prognosis template if the similarity to said good prognosis template is below said predetermined threshold; and (iii) displaying; or outputting to a user interface device, a computer readable storage medium, or a local or remote computer system; the classification produced by said classifying step (ii).