Dr. Tripathy Discusses Breast Cancer Biomarkers

Debu Tripathy, MD, professor of medicine and co-leader of the Women’s Cancer Program at the University of Southern California Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, describes the biomarkers used in clinical decision-making at the time of surgery for early stage breast cancer.

Tripathy describes estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and HER2 neu as mandatory in order to make decisions for invasive cancer, for in situ ER and PR are useful to determine if a hormonal therapy will be effective. Trastuzumab is currently being used for mostly all HER2 positive breast cancer with a few exceptions. If there is an expression of even 1% or more of either estrogen or progesterone it calls for the use of hormonal therapy.