Steven Isakoff, Breast Medical Oncologist at Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, shares findings from a 70-gene signature breast cancer study, presented at ASCO 2026. The study assessed the relationship between homologous recombination deficiency and breast cancer risk category determined with the 70-gene assay.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
My name is Steven Isakoff. I'm a breast medical oncologist at Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, and we're here at ASCO 2026 in the poster session.
Today, I'm presenting a poster looking at the seventy-gene signature to see if we can identify a correlation between homologous recombination deficiency and the different outcomes between high risk 1, high risk 2, low risk, and ultra low risk.
The data that we looked at showed that homologous recombination deficiency is actually highest in the patients with a high risk 2 score. When we look at the different BluePrint subtypes, we also notice that in the basal-like high risk 2, that has the highest homologous recombination deficiency association. And in the luminal high risk 2, there's also an increase compared to a luminal high risk 1, but it's lower than the basal group.
And so we think this observation is interesting because we know that high scores also correlate with benefit from anthracyclines. And our hypothesis, potentially, is that the correlation with the higher homologous recombination deficiency may explain why anthracyclines might be preferentially more effective in the high score.
So thanks very much and hope you enjoy ASCO 2026.
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