BCL-2 expression aids in the immunohistochemical prediction of the Oncotype DX breast cancer recurrence score

Background The development of molecular techniques to estimate the risk of breast cancer recurrence has been a significant addition to the suite of tools available to pathologists and breast oncologists. It has previously been shown that immunohistochemistry can provide a surrogate measure of tumor recurrence risk, effectively providing a less expensive and more rapid estimate of risk without the need for send-out. However, concordance between gene expression-based and immunohistochemistry-based approaches has been modest, making it difficult to determine when one approach can serve as an adequate substitute for the other. We investigated whether immunohistochemistry-based methods can be augmented to provide a useful therapeutic indicator of risk.