MD Anderson pathologist shares results from xMAP®-powered breast cancer studies at user group meeting
The recent xMAP® Connect user group meeting featured an impressive roster of speakers, and included among them was Fraser Symmans, pathologist and director at MD Anderson Cancer Center. His presentation offered an update on those projects designed to predict an individual’s breast cancer response to endocrine therapy—which is one of the most important and widely used long-term treatments available for those with HR+/HER2- breast cancer. Moreover, those clinical assays that interrogate therapeutic response have been supported by Luminex’s xMAP Technology.
xMAP Technology helps build platform for breast cancer studies
Symmans explained that his work began years ago, when his earliest assays were designed from microarrays that enabled the analysis of key transcripts. But as his team progressed, they aimed to create a customized assay that might eventually become a clinical test. They began by establishing a set of genes whose expression revealed information about the activity of an individual’s endocrine pathway and their correlation with cancer treatment. Over time, the scientists gathered data on endocrine therapy sensitivity, response to chemotherapy, burden of disease at diagnosis, and more.
Ultimately, Symmans’s team selected a group of genes that collectively serve as a prognostic index for endocrine therapy response. However, they wanted to move forward with an assay platform that could be used with Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded (FFPE) samples. Symmans and his colleagues compared an xMAP assay to the original microarrays, as well as to another gene expression technology and found excellent concordance across the platforms.
xMAP Technology serves as “a very stable platform”
“We made the choice for xMAP based on some preferences and some workflow logistics that we thought would be advantageous,” he said. It offers “outstanding performance” and now serves as “a very stable platform for us,” he added. Subsequent inter- and intra-lab studies demonstrated the platform’s strong reproducibility and “excellent concordance of this assay in different labs,” Symmans reported — noting that this was the case even for users who had no previous familiarity with the technology.
Symmans and his colleagues have used the xMAP-based assay to study various types of breast cancer samples as they expand their validation of the prognostic index. They have now assessed clinical utility in several different projects, predicting not only response to endocrine therapy, but also long-term survival. Their assay is now established in a CLIA laboratory, ready for use in prospective clinical trials and/or in commercial development projects.