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PURPOSE: Many patients with breast cancer still relapse after curative treatment. How to identify the ones with high relapse risk remains a critical problem. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has recently become a promising marker to monitor tumor burden. Whether ctDNA can be used to predict the response and prognosis in patients with breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is unknown. Our study aimed to evaluate the clinical value of the presence and dynamic change of ctDNA to predict the tumor response and prognosis in patients with breast cancer treated with NAC. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifty-two patients with early breast cancer who underwent NAC were prospectively enrolled. Serial plasma samples before, during, and after NAC and paired tumor biopsies were harvested and subjected to deep targeted sequencing using a large next-generation sequencing panel that covers 1,021 cancer-related genes. RESULTS: = .004) in patients with early breast cancer, especially in estrogen receptor-negative patients. CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrated that ctDNA can be used to predict tumor response to NAC and prognosis in early breast cancer, providing information to tailor an individual's therapeutic regimen.
Li et al. (Fri,) studied this question.