Blood Test Monitors Aggressive Metastatic Breast Cancer Therapy

A new patient study confirms that a noninvasive blood test has a role in monitoring breast-cancer patient response to therapy.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) recommends that clinicians should determine if a metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patient carries a protein called HER-2/neu, which is associated with an aggressive type of cancer that responds less favorably to treatment. The new non-invasive blood test can be used to help monitor the widely used Herceptin therapy. More than 50% of metastatic breast cancer patients can have HER-2/neu positive tumors. It is important to identify these patients because they may benefit from Herceptin therapy, which specifically targets this aggressive type of cancer.

Data from a new study, published in the American Cancer Society journal Cancer, support using the serum HER-2/neu test, a product of Siemens Healthcare (Deerfield, IL, USA), to monitor patients with an aggressive type of metastatic breast cancer.

In the study, out of the 307 patients with MBC monitored, 191 patients (62%) had a significant decline (>20%) in serum HER-2/neu and 116 patients (38%) did not. The response to therapy was 57% for patients who achieved this decline in Serum HER-2/neu (>20%) compared with 28% for patients who did not. Patients who achieved this decline in serum HER-2/neu also had a significantly longer time to disease progression (a longer period of response to therapy) and longer overall survival.

The Siemens serum HER-2/neu blood test is intended to quantitatively measure the HER-2/neu protein in serum of women with metastatic breast cancer. The use of the serum HER-2/neu test is indicated for follow-up and monitoring of patients with metastatic breast cancer whose initial serum HER-2/neu value is greater than15 ng/mL.

"This particular study is important because it offers additional evidence of the importance of monitoring therapy for an aggressive type of breast cancer," noted CEO of Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Donal Quinn. "Breast cancer is the most frequent type of cancer diagnosed in women, causing over 548,000 deaths worldwide each year. It is a priority to our company to help clinicians understand their options to monitor and treat breast cancer patients, with the goal to increase survival rates of the thousands of women fighting this battle."

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