IBMS Congress

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New prognostic and predictive markers in breast cancer

Prognostic Markers

Cellular Pathology

Professor Anthony Rhodes, University of the West of England, Bristol.

Triple negative (TN) breast cancers are defined by their lack of expression of hormone receptors and human epidermal growth factor receptor – 2 (HER2) and account for 10-24% of all breast cancers. These tumours have a poor prognosis and unlike hormone receptor and HER2 positive breast carcinomas, there are no targeted therapeutic regimes that have been shown to significantly improve survival.

Various studies show that between 56-84% of triple negative breast cancers express high molecular weight cytokeratins and have the basal-like phenotype similar to that defined by molecular expression profiling.  Approximately 11-percent of patients with triple negative breast cancers have a mutation in the BRCA1 gene. Conversely, most patients with BRCA1 mutations have breast tumours that are triple negative.

Breast cancer research at the University of the West of England, in collaboration with the University of Malaya and the University of Bristol, is focused on identifying and validating new prognostic and predictive markers for these high grade and aggressive cancers.