microRNAs as prognosticators and predictive factors in breast cancer

Cancer Diagnostics Conference & Expo

June 13-15, 2016 Rome, Italy

Emiel Janssen

Stavanger University Hospital, Norway

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Cancer Sci Ther

Abstract :

Despite progress in understanding breast cancer, we are still left with two important controversies. First, a disappointingly small number of reliable and reproducible prognostic and predictive factors have been developed that can meet the demand for the clinical setting, even though more than 100 prognostic factors are known. As an example of the urgent need for more knowledge in this field is the recent extension from the 5-year tamoxifen treatment schedule to 10-year adjuvant tamoxifen treatment for estrogen receptor (ER) positive breast cancers. Due to the lack of predictive markers, the clinicians are not able to decide who will benefit from this extension as only 2-3% of the patients will experience a long term overall survival benefit. This further supports the St. Gallen guidelines, where over and under treatment is estimated to occur in 85% and 20% of the lymph node negative patients. Secondly, there has been a substantial focus on personalized systemic treatment in the primary/adjuvant setting. However, when the primary treatment has been completed, the systematic follow-up is only focused upon early detection of local relapse (i.e. mammogram/ ultrasound and clinical examination). Paradoxically, there is no search for early systemic relapse even though the distant metastatic lesions will kill the patient if they become clinically overt. In this lecture, the role of microRNAs as prognostic and predictive biomarkers in breast cancer will be discussed, as well as the use of microRNAs in therapy.

Biography :

Email: jaem@sus.no