Approaches towards expression profiling the response to treatment

• Published in: Breast cancer research : BCR Vol. 10; no. 6; p. 115
• Main Authors: Sims, Andrew H, Bartlett, John M S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 01.01.2008; National Library of Medicine - MEDLINE Abstracts; BioMed Central
• Subjects: Breast Neoplasms - drug therapy; Breast Neoplasms - genetics; Breast Neoplasms - pathology; Cancer; Female; Gene expression; Gene Expression Profiling; Genes; Genetic aspects; Genetic research; Humans; Oncology, Experimental; Prognosis; Treatment Outcome
• DOI: 10.1186/bcr2196
• ISSN: 1465-542X; 1465-5411

Over the past 8 years there has been a wealth of breast cancer gene expression studies. The majority of these studies have focused upon characterising a tumour at presentation, before treatment, rather than looking at the effects of treatment on the tumour. More recently, a number of groups have moved from predicting prognosis based upon long-term follow-up to alternative approaches of using expression profiling to measure the effect of treatment on breast tumours and potentially predict response to therapy using either post-treatment samples or both pre-treatment and post-treatment samples. Whilst this provides great potential to further our understanding of the mode of action of treatments and to more accurately select which patients will benefit from a particular treatment, serious issues of experimental design must be considered.