New tools for Breast Cancer
Most people think of genetic testing as the process of searching for abnormalities (mutations) in a person’s DNA that are linked to a disease or disorder.
Genetic testing, although a relatively recent tool, has developed into a broad discipline with a number of different applications in cancer ranging from screening individuals for genetic (inherited) predisposition for cancer to predicting tumor behavior.
We can now offers a different type of genetic testing based on activity of the genome to uncover critical aspects of tumor cell behavior. We examine another type of information carrier, the RNA. The RNA reveals the activity of the genes in the tumor. Since the behavior of the tumor is determined by the activity of its genes, important information regarding tumor behavior can be obtained by analysing the RNA from a tumor. With MammaPrint your treatment can be personalised to offer the best possible outcome.
Why use DNA Microarray Technology
The DNA of each cell in the human body contains the same 25,000 genes, but their activity differs from cell to cell. The activity of the genes determines the behavior of a cell, as the expressed genes are translated via the mRNA into the proteins of the cell. Proteins determine nearly all aspects of life. In liver cells, different genes are more active than compared to other tissues such as kidney cells. Similarly, aggressive breast cancers have different patterns of gene activity than less aggressive breast cancers and it is therefore possible to determine the aggressiveness of a breast cancer by studying the activity of the genes in the cancer.
In 2002, the two co-founders of Agendia, Dr. Van´t Veer and Dr. Bernards, together with Dr. van de Vijver (NKI-AVL) and Dr. Friend (Rosetta) published in Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine an mRNA based method for genomic profiling using DNA microarrays that predicts the clinical outcome of breast cancer.
DNA microarray technology allows scientists to study the activity of thousands of genes simultaneously. By studying the activity of all 25,000 genes in over 300 breast cancer tumor samples, Agendia’s scientists identified a pattern of 70 genes that together foretell how aggressive a breast cancer will be. These revolutionary findings were highlighted not only in the scientific press but also in most major newspapers world-wide, including the New York Times. This breast cancer prognosis test, made available to breast cancer patients under the name 'MammaPrint®', has been shown to outperform in several clinical studies the conventional clinico-pathological risk assessment for breast cancer.
Figure legend:
The MammaPrint® microarray test for breast cancer measures the activity of 70 genes to assess the risk that the tumor will spread to other organs. Clinical studies have shown that MammaPrint® is more accurate than the conventional techniques in identifying patients at high risk to develop metastase.