Breast cancer biomarkers: Prognosis and prediction

Despite the great advances in prevention, screening, early detection and better treatment, most of the advanced breast cancer (BC) patients will eventually die because of their disease. Nearly half of all operable BC patients, having been diagnosed with the disease localized to the breast and regional lymph nodes only, will develop the metastatic disease, despite the radical surgery followed or not by radiotherapy. A substantial part of these women can be cured only by surgery. In those patients, who will develop the recurrent disease due to the coexisting micrometastases at diagnosis, the adjuvant treatment may improve the outcome, either by delaying the local or distant recurrence and death, or by the preventing of disease spreading. This means, the adjuvant treatment prolongs the disease-free (DFS) and overall survival (OS), or even cures some patients.