Future Research into Accuracy of PREDICT+ for HER2-Positive Breast Cancer

Elisa Agostinetto, MD, of the Istituto Clinico Humanitas in Rozzano, Milan, Italy, discusses the next steps in the research into the accuracy of PREDICT+ to predict survival in HER2-positive breast cancer.

According to Agostinetto, the main question is why PREDICT+ underestimated the survival of patients in the ALTTO trial (NCT00490139). There are a few potential reasons for the discrepancy. For example, patients included in clinical trials tend to be healthier with less comorbidities, as trials tend to be more selective, according to Agostinetto. This could have created a discrepancy between the real-world data and data collected in clinical trials. 

Future studies should focus on collecting data to provide a precise and reliable prognostication for patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer, according to Agostinetto. In combination with clinical pathological data, a clinical trial can help provide this information.

0:08 | Well, of course, it would be interesting to understand why there was this underestimation. One hypothesis can be related to the fact that the patients included in clinical trials are overall more selective, meaning that they can be healthier, with less comorbidities. This can create a discrepancy between the real-world data and the data collected from the clinical trials. So, I think that as future perspective, the most important thing, and what we really need from the future study is having data that can help us to provide a very precise and reliable prognostication for patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer. In this sense, probably the integration of genomic data, like genomic signature research, together with clinical pathological data can help us in this sense.