Publication in New England Journal of Medicine shows equivalence of different molecular signatures for breast cancer --
Amsterdam, The Netherlands 21.08.2006

In a publication in the August 10 2006 issue of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, Agendia's MammaPrint® 70 gene breast cancer prognosis test and three other multi gene tests are shown to be superior over conventional assessment of risk of future metastatic disease. This reinforces the reliability of multi-gene tests for breast cancer prognosis prediction. The authors conclude that, even though the multi gene tests have only minimal overlap in the genes used, they show a remarkable agreement in assigning patients to the same risk category. This is probably due to the fact that the different genes used track a common set of biological characteristics of the individual cancer, leading to a similar assessment of the risk of developing metastatic disease.

Dr. Charles Perou, senior author of the New England Journal of Medicine states in the publication that it is clear that these profiles provided significant additional information beyond that provided by grade (i.e. histological assessment of tumor aggressiveness).
In a commentary in the same issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Joyce O'Shaughnessy comments that multi-gene tests will alter medical practice such that in the future 30- to 50% fewer patients with ER-positive breast cancer will receive adjuvant chemotherapy.

Professor Rene Bernards, Chief Scientific Officer of Agendia, comments: "While we are pleased that multi gene tests have been shown to be a reliable tool, it is too early to tell whether the tests to which Agendia's MammaPrint® was compared are truly equivalent in performance. The numbers used in the current study are simply too small to make a definite call. Larger studies, in which the performance of the signatures is tested on larger numbers of patients will be required to reveal differences in accuracy of these tests. "Given the performance of the MammaPrint® signature in the series of patients tested to date (which is expressed as the "hazard ratio"), we are confident that MammaPrint® will turn out to be the most accurate breast cancer prognosis test" said Bernards. "It is only logical that one gets more accurate information when using intact RNA isolated from fresh tissue than from using degraded RNA, which is present in paraffin-fixed tissues used in some other tests".
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