Patent Document ID: 20120193525
Application ID: 13356730
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of determining whether a hormone receptor positive breast cancer patient, regardless of HER2 status, is unlikely to benefit from administration of an endocrine therapy drug alone for treatment of the cancer, comprising the steps of: a) obtaining a mass spectrum from a blood-based sample from the patient; b) performing one or more predefined pre-processing steps on the mass spectrum obtained in step a); c) obtaining values of selected features in said spectrum at one or more predefined m/z ranges after the pre-processing steps on the mass spectrum in step b) have been performed; d) using the values obtained in step c) in a classification algorithm using a training set comprising class-labeled spectra produced from samples from other cancer patients and obtaining a class label for the sample; and e) if the class label obtained in step d) is “Poor” or the equivalent, then the patient is identified as being unlikely to benefit from the endocrine therapy drug.