Using a gene signature technique to tailor chemotherapy for patients with early triple negative breast cancer shows promise as a way to improve disease-free survival, finds a clinical trial published by The BMJ today. Triple negative breast cancer is an aggressive type of breast cancer that carries a higher risk of recurrence and death after standard treatment. As such, there is an urgent need for more effective chemotherapy strategies.
Multigene signatures are tests that analyse genes in a tumour sample to predict how well a patient will respond to chemotherapy and the risk of their cancer returning to help guide treatment decisions, but validated signatures for triple negative breast cancer are scarce. So researchers in China set out to test the feasibility of using a multigene RNA signature to tailor chemotherapy for patients with operable triple negative breast cancer. The trial enrolled 504 female patients aged 18-70 years at seven cancer centres in China who had undergone surgery for early stage triple-negative breast cancer between January 2016 and July 2023.
Patients classified by the signature as being at high risk were randomised to receive intensive chemotherapy or standard chemotherapy. Patients at low risk also received standard chemotherapy. After an average follow-up period of 45 months, three year disease-free survival was significantly better among participants at high risk who received the more intensive treatment than in those receiving standard care (91% v.
