Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women (25%) with 1.6 million new cases annually worldwide and increasing by around 1.5% each year. Due to the advent of mammographic screening across the EU and worldwide over the last 30 years, the majority of newly diagnosed breast cancers are early stage, hormone receptor-positive (ER+), lymph node-negative (LN-) cancers (i.e. not spread beyond the breast). These patients usually undergo surgery to remove the tumour, followed by chemotherapy to remove any remaining tumour cells in their system to prevent recurrence of the disease. Whether or not to subject these patients to additional chemotherapy is an ongoing problem for clinicians. Besides the temporary effect on quality of life due to chemotherapy (nausea, hair loss, diarrhoea, constipation, appetite changes, sore mouth and eyes), there is an increased risk of death due to treatment alone, and also an increased risk of future cancer. It is estimated that 30% of women with early stage disease will go on to develop a recurrence after surgery, meaning that up to 70% of women with early stage breast cancer are treated with chemotherapy, despite not benefiting from such treatment, thereby exposing these individuals to severe side effects.
OncoMark Ltd are developing a novel breast cancer assay, called OncoMasTR, which has the potential to transform clinical practice and patient care. The OncoMasTR assay will help clinicians to determine which patients should not receive chemotherapy for early stage breast cancer thus avoiding unnecessary chemotherapy. The OncoMasTR assay identifies those patients at low risk of recurrence which will greatly reduce the numbers receiving chemotherapy but will not increase the risk of recurrence. Reducing the number of patients receiving cancer-related treatments will reduce the requirements for healthcare provision (doctors, nurses and hospital beds) and reduce economic hardship for patients who routinely lose working days due to chemotherapy-induced side effects. OncoMasTR will be a CE marked kit that can be used in hospital laboratories, and penetrate a global market. The OncoMasTR assay is more cost effective that the leading competitor assays and has markedly better performance than the market leaders.
