MammaPrint and BluePrint identify critical aspects of tumor biology in African-American breast cancer patients

AgendiaJun 4 2019

Agendia, Inc., a world leader in precision oncology, today announced the presentation of study results for BluePrint and MammaPrint use in identifying African-American women with hormone receptor positive tumors that have different genomic subtypes and risk than Caucasian women. The study suggests that BluePrint and MammaPrint can help characterize a tumor’s biology -- a critical component of treatment decision-making -- and the prognosis that select patients may have, whether low or high risk, independent of genetic ancestry.

African-American women with breast cancer typically have a less favorable prognosis overall. This is a result of numerous factors including well-established health disparities, as well as differences in tumor biology. MammaPrint is a prognostic and predictive diagnostic test for early stage breast cancer that analyzes the 70 most important genes associated with cancer recurrence to classify each breast cancer patient into “low risk” or “high risk” of developing metastases within the first 10 years after diagnosis.

Presented today, results from the study “Race and response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy according to MammaPrint risk” showed:

• African-American patients had a higher likelihood of having higher grade, ER-, LN+ tumors
• MammaPrint identified patients with low risk outcomes, irrespective of race
• In multivariate analysis, race was a significant factor for higher pathological complete response (pCR) rates to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in African-American compared to Caucasian patients, together with PR, HER2, T-stage and Grade (HR = 1.679, 95% CI = (1.057, 2.67), p = 0.028)

The findings in this study add important new observations to the prior research with MammaPrint regarding the biologic characteristics of breast cancer in African-American women. Molecular subtyping with BluePrint in African-American women, compared with Caucasian women, found different proportions of Luminal A, Luminal B, HER2 and Basal type cancers. Most importantly however, MammaPrint identification of Low or High Risk outcomes and Blueprint ability to classify subtypes were the same, regardless of African-American or Caucasian ancestry. Unlike other assays, MammaPrint and BluePrint identify critical aspects of tumor biology with universal application and consistent interpretation for all women with breast cancer. These data show that through genomic profiling, we now have the ability to predict and identify how a tumor might respond to treatment to drive better outcomes for all patients with breast cancer”

William Audeh, MD, Medical Oncologist and Agendia Chief Medical Officer

A previous study -- the Neoadjuvant BReast Cancer Symphony Trial (NBRST) -- was a prospective trial that showed an association of MammaPrint and BluePrint^® with a rate of 2% pCR in Luminal A cancers with a 95% Distant Metastasis Free Interval at 3 years. This new study provides data on the risk distribution, response to therapy, and outcomes in African-American and Caucasian women. The study also confirms that racial differences in gene expression is a contributing factor to the survival disparity observed between African-American and Caucasian women with breast cancer.