In addition to quantifying breast cancer recurrence risk, Oncotype DX also assesses the benefit from chemotherapy.1 While adjuvant chemotherapy is an important part of the care of breast cancer patients, a major challenge in oncology has been to better define the risk/benefit ratio for candidates of adjuvant chemotherapy. By characterizing an individual's risk of recurrence and responsiveness to treatment, Oncotype DX can provide physicians with the information they need to develop a treatment plan tailored to the individual patient. The ability of the Oncotype DX assay to predict the treatment benefit in breast cancer was demonstrated in a study of 651 eligible patients from the tamoxifen alone arm (n = 227) and tamoxifen plus chemotherapy treatment arm (CMF/MF) (n = 424) of NSABP Study B-20. Results showed that the Recurrence Score (RS) is a significant predictor of chemotherapy benefit (p-value for interaction = 0.038) and that not all patients benefit equally from chemotherapy: * Patients with tumors that had low Recurrence Scores (RS < 18) derived minimal, or no benefit from chemotherapy * Patients with tumors that had high Recurrence Scores (RS > 31) had a large absolute benefit from chemotherapy 1The data on chemotherapy benefit is derived from the NSABP Study B-20 which compared hormonal therapy alone versus CMF based chemotherapy and hormonal therapy. NOTE: This article was written up on the Genomic Health site

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