After unsuccessful surgery, medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) may be fatal or remain stable for decades, and precise survival predictors are needed. This study assesses the prognostic value of calcitonin and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) doubling-times (DT). This is a retrospective study on 65 MTC patients from 2.9-29.5 yr after surgery. Data registered in the database of the French Neuroendocrine Tumor Group were analyzed anonymously. All patients had abnormal calcitonin levels after total thyroidectomy and bilateral lymph node dissection. Calcitonin and CEA serum levels were measured during routine disease follow-up. To assess DT as prognostic factors, a patient population was extracted from the database. When calcitonin DT was less than 6 months, 5- and 10-yr survivals were three of 12 (25%) and one of 12 (8%), respectively; when between 6 months and 2 yr, 5- and 10-yr survivals were 11 of 12 (92%) and three of eight (37%), whereas all 41 patients with calcitonin DT greater than 2 yr were alive at the end of the study. Tumor-Node-Metastasis (TNM) stage, European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) score, and calcitonin DT were significant predictors of survival by univariate analysis, but only calcitonin DT remained an independent predictor of survival by multivariate analysis (P = 0.002) with a proportion of variance explained (PVE) of 37.4%. Calcitonin DT was a better predictor than CEA (PVE 63.3% and 47.0%, respectively). Calcitonin DT calculated using only the first four measurements was also an independent predictor of survival (P < 0.000001; PVE 40.4%). Calcitonin DT may be superior to initial clinical staging and among the most powerful prognostic indicators in MTC.

Purpose Cytogenetics is an important prognostic parameter in multiple myeloma (MM). Patients presenting with either t(4;14) or del(17p) are known to have a short event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS). Some preliminary data suggest that bortezomib is able to overcome these prognostic parameters. Patients and Methods A series of 507 patients with newly diagnosed MM who received four cycles of bortezomib-dexamethasone induction therapy before high-dose melphalan were analyzed for both t(4;14) and del(17p). Results We found that both t(4;14) and del(17p) remain prognostic parameters, even in the context of bortezomib treatment. However, it is important to note that bortezomib significantly improves the prognosis (in terms of both EFS and OS) of patients with t(4;14), compared with patients treated with vincristine, doxorubicin, and dexamethasone induction therapy. In contrast, no improvement was observed for del(17p) patients. Conclusion Short-term bortezomib induction improves outcome of patients with t(4;14) but not the outcome of patients with del(17p). However, both abnormalities remain prognostic factors predicting both EFS and OS despite bortezomib induction.

Purpose: Survival of patients with multiple myeloma is highly heterogeneous, from periods of a few weeks to more than 10 years. We used gene expression profiles of myeloma cells obtained at diagnosis to identify broadly applicable prognostic markers. Patients and Methods: In a training set of 182 patients, we used supervised methods to identify individual genes associated with length of survival. A survival model was built from these genes. The validity of our model was assessed in our test set of 68 patients and in three independent cohorts comprising 853 patients with multiple myeloma. Results: The 15 strongest genes associated with the length of survival were used to calculate a risk score and to stratify patients into low-risk and high-risk groups. The survival-predictor score was significantly associated with survival in both the training and test sets and in the external validation cohorts. The Kaplan-Meier estimates of rates of survival at 3 years were 90.5% (95% CI, 85.6% to 95.3%) and 47.4% (95% CI, 33.5% to 60.1%), respectively, in our patients having a low risk or high risk independently of traditional prognostic factors. High-risk patients constituted a homogeneous biologic entity characterized by the overexpression of genes involved in cell cycle progression and its surveillance, whereas low-risk patients were heterogeneous and displayed hyperdiploid signatures. Conclusion: Gene expression–based survival prediction and molecular features associated with high-risk patients may be useful for developing prognostic markers and may provide basis to treat these patients with new targeted antimitotics.

Introduction: Triple-negative breast cancers need to be refined in order to identify therapeutic subgroups of patients. Methods: We conducted an unsupervised analysis of microarray gene-expression profiles of 107 triple-negative breast cancer patients and undertook robust functional annotation of the molecular entities found by means of numerous approaches including immunohistochemistry and gene-expression signatures. A triple-negative external cohort (n = 87) was used for validation. Results: Fuzzy clustering separated triple-negative tumours into three clusters: C1 (22.4%), C2 (44.9%) and C3 (32.7%). C1 patients were older (mean = 64.6 years) than C2 (mean = 56.8 years; P = 0.03) and C3 patients (mean = 51.9 years; P = 0.0004). Histological grade and Nottingham prognostic index were higher in C2 and C3 than in C1 (P < 0.0001 for both comparisons). Significant event-free survival (P = 0.03) was found according to cluster membership: patients belonging to C3 had a better outcome than patients in C1 (P = 0.01) and C2 (P = 0.02). Event-free survival analysis results were confirmed when our cohort was pooled with the external cohort (n = 194; P = 0.01). Functional annotation showed that 22% of triple-negative patients were not basal-like (C1). C1 was enriched in luminal subtypes and positive androgen receptor (luminal androgen receptor). C2 could be considered as an almost pure basal-like cluster. C3, enriched in basal-like subtypes but to a lesser extent, included 26% of claudin-low subtypes. Dissection of immune response showed that high immune response and low M2-like macrophages were a hallmark of C3, and that these patients had a better event-free survival than C2 patients, characterized by low immune response and high M2-like macrophages: P = 0.02 for our cohort, and P = 0.03 for pooled cohorts. Conclusions: We identified three subtypes of triple-negative patients: luminal androgen receptor (22%), basal-like with low immune response and high M2-like macrophages (45%), and basal-enriched with high immune response and low M2-like macrophages (33%). We noted out that macrophages and other immune effectors offer a variety of therapeutic targets in breast cancer, and particularly in triple-negative basal-like tumours. Furthermore, we showed that CK5 antibody was better suited than CK5/6 antibody to subtype triple-negative patients.

Purpose: This study aimed to assess prospectively the efficacy of sequential [¹⁸F]fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET) to evaluate early response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in stage II and III breast cancer patients. Patients and Methods: Images were acquired with a PET/computed tomography scanner in 64 patients after administration of FDG (5 MBq/kg) at baseline and after the first, second, third, and sixth course of chemotherapy. Ultrasound and mammography were used to assess tumor size. Decrease in the standardized uptake value (SUV) with PET was compared with the pathologic response. Results: Surgery was performed after six courses of chemotherapy and pathologic analysis revealed gross residual disease in 28 patients and minimal residual disease in 36 patients. Although SUV data did not vary much in nonresponders (based on pathology findings), they decreased markedly to background levels in 94% (34 of 36) of responders. When using 60% of SUV at baseline as the cutoff value, the sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive value of FDG PET were 61%, 96%, and 68% after one course of chemotherapy, 89%, 95%, and 85% after two courses, and 88%, 73%, and 83% after three courses, respectively. The same parameters with ultrasound (US) and mammography were 64%, 43%, and 55%, and 31%, 56%, and 45%, respectively. Assessment of tumor response with US or mammography was never significant whatever the cutoff. Conclusion: Pathologic response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in stage II and III breast cancer can be predicted accurately by FDG PET after two courses of chemotherapy.