SBIR Phase II: Multi-Marker Prognostic Test for Breast Cancer Outcome

这一小型商业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目旨在继续验证一套用于预测I-III期乳腺癌患者复发和指导治疗选择的标志物。在切除I-III期可手术肿瘤后，乳腺癌患者必须决定是否接受辅助治疗，如化疗或激素治疗。目前，医生和患者可以通过依赖于几个已发表的指南来做出决定，这些指南的准确性受到以下事实的限制，即它们基于一般的临床病理数据，如肿瘤大小和分级。因此，建议大多数患者接受辅助治疗，尽管只有一小部分患者从中受益。一套可靠的标记物可以预测肿瘤的复发，这将允许为每个患者量身定做辅助治疗，从而可能减少治疗不足和过度治疗的机会。因此，它对癌症患者和肿瘤学家都有很大的好处。

This Small Bbusiness Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to continue the validation of a set of markers for predicting recurrence and guiding the selection of treatment in stage I-III breast cancer patients. Upon removal of their primary stage I-III operable tumors, breast cancer patients must decide whether or not to receive adjuvant therapy such as chemotherapy, or hormone therapy. Currently, the physician and patient can arrive at the decision by relying on several published guidelines whose accuracy is limited by the fact that they are based on general clinicopathologic data such as tumor size and grade. Thus the majority of patients are recommended to receive adjuvant therapy, although only a small fraction of them benefit from it. Availability of a set of reliable markers that can predict recurrence of tumors would allow tailoring of adjuvant therapy for each patient and is thus likely to reduce the chances of under-treatment and over-treatment. As such, it would be of great benefit to cancer patients, as well as to oncologists.