Patent Document ID: 20130131996
Application ID: 13741634
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of determining whether a post-menopausal hormone receptor positive breast cancer patient with HER2-negative status is likely to benefit from administration of a combination treatment comprising administration of a targeted anti-cancer drug in addition to an endocrine therapy drug, 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; and 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 likely to benefit from the combination treatment.