Sir,
I want to congratulate Fujii et al (2017) for their article in which they established a nomogram to predict the probability of pathologic complete response (pCR) rates by using oestrogen receptor (ER) expression, progesterone receptor (PR) expression, and HER2/CEP17 ratio as continuous variables. They reported that low ER expression, high HER2/CEP12 ratio, and noninflammatory breast cancer subtype were significantly associated with increased pCR rates. However, histologic grade and Ki67 level were not evaluated to determine their relationship with pCR for the development of nomogram. As associated with this, Kurozumi et al (2015) determined whether pCR was related to histological grade and several biological factors including Ki67 in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy using taxanes followed by fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide concomitant with trastuzumab. They found that high histological grade, low ER, low PR, and high Ki67 were identified as predictive factors of pCR in neoadjuvant chemotherapy with trastuzumab. Taken all together, histological grade and Ki67 would be additional variables to build up more robust nomogram to predict pCR in HER2-positive breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant systemic therapy.
Change history
11 April 2017
This paper was modified 12 months after initial publication to switch to Creative Commons licence terms, as noted at publication
References
Fujii T, Kogawa T, Wu J, Sahin AA, Liu DD, Chavez-MacGregor M, Giordano SH, Raghavendra A, Murthy RK, Tripathy D, Shen Y, Yamal JM, Ueno NT (2017) Nomogram to predict pathologic complete response in HER2-positive breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant systemic therapy. Br J Cancer 116 (4): 509–514.
Kurozumi S, Inoue K, Takei H, Matsumoto H, Kurosumi M, Horiguchi J, Takeyoshi I, Oyama T (2015) ER, PgR, Ki67, p27(Kip1), and histological grade as predictors of pathological complete response in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy using taxanes followed by fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide concomitant with trastuzumab. BMC Cancer 15: 622.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The author declares no conflict of interest.
Additional information
This work is published under the BJC's standard license to publish agreement. After 12 months the license terms will change to a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 Unported License.
Rights and permissions
From twelve months after its original publication, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
About this article
Cite this article
Altundag, K. Comment on ‘Nomogram to predict pathologic complete response in HER2-positive breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant systemic therapy’. Br J Cancer 116, e10 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/bjc.2017.60
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/bjc.2017.60