Real-World Evidence of the Impact of CanAssist Breast on Physician’s Decision About the Use of Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Early Breast Cancer

Background Clinicians use prognostic biomarker/multi-gene-based tests for predicting recurrence in hormone receptor-positive/HER2-negative (HR+/HER2-) early-stage breast cancer (EBC). CanAssist Beast (CAB) uses the expression of five protein biomarkers in combination with tumor-specific parameters such as tumor size, histopathological grade, and lymph node status to predict the risk of distant recurrence within five years of diagnosis for patients with HR+/HER2-, EBC. The current study aimed to evaluate the impact of prognostic tests on adjuvant chemotherapy decisions by assessing the agreement between clinical and CAB risk stratification as low-risk (LR) or high-risk (HR) for distant recurrence. Methods The primary study group included 300 patients with HR+/HER2-, EBC diagnosed between 2016 and 2021. The clinical risk assessment and recommended treatment plan were captured before and after receiving the results for CAB. The risk stratification of patients into CAB LR and HR was obtained. Finally, compliance with CAB was analyzed by assessing the concordance of treatment prescribed with the CAB risk category. Results Before performing the CanAssist Breast test, patients were stratified based on clinicopathological features, with 52% of patients as LR, 21% as HR, and 27% of patients distributed as uncertain/intermediate risk (IR) category. CAB re-stratified the same cohort of patients, 67% as LR and 33% as HR, which was 15% higher than that of clinical LR assessment. The clinical IR category was re-stratified by CAB as 51% LR and 49% HR. Changes in treatment recommendations were seen in both clinical HR and clinical LR groups, which were 87% and 85%, respectively. Conclusions CAB has a significant impact on chemotherapy decisions. CAB provides definite treatment recommendations for patients with clinical intermediate risk. Overall, CAB has changed treatment recommendations in 23% of the cohort and for 88% of clinical IR patients helped physicians make a treatment decision.