Dr. Esteva on the Clinical Implications of Genomic Testing for Breast Cancer

Francisco J. Esteva, MD, PhD, medical oncologist, NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses the clinical implications of genomic testing in breast cancer.

There are different technologies that are being used to profile both primary and metastatic breast cancer tumors including next-generation sequencing, circulating-free DNA in the plasma, and other technologies looking at the tumor microenvironment, states Esteva.

The most important area right now in terms of research is the profiling of metastatic tumors. In breast cancer, there are not as many mutations in cancer-related genes as we have seen in other tumor types, such as melanoma or others where the mutational load is not as high, explains Esteva.