Dr. Piccart on the MINDACT Study for Early-Stage Breast Cancer

Martine J. Piccart, MD, PhD, professor of Oncology, Université Libre de Bruxelles, director of Medicine, Jules Bordet Institute, Brussels, Belgium, discusses the primary analysis of the prospective randomized MINDACT study, which evaluated the clinical utility of the 70-gene signature (MammaPrint) combined with common clinical-pathological criteria for selection of patients for adjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer with 0 to 3 positive nodes.

Findings of the phase III study demonstrated that Mammaprint is the first test for patients with node-positive disease which can be used in clinical practice in an effort to decrease the use of chemotherapy, Piccart explains. Additional tests include Oncotype DX, which is primarily used for women with node-negative disease.

Mammaprint was found to demonstrate a high level of accuracy at identifying a large subset of women with clinically high-risk early stage breast cancer for whom adjuvant chemotherapy was unlikely to produce benefit. The MINDACT study, Piccart adds, was a result of several collaborations.