Prognostic Utility of Breast Cancer Index to Stratify Distant Recurrence Risk in Invasive Lobular Carcinoma

Purpose: The prognostic utility of Breast Cancer Index (BCI) for risk assessment of overall (0-10 years), early (0-5 years), and late (5-10 years) distant recurrence (DR) in hormone receptor-positive (HR+) invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) was evaluated. Experimental Design: BCI gene expression analysis was performed blinded to clinical outcome utilizing tumor specimens from patients with HR+ILC from a multi-institutional cohort. The primary endpoint was time to DR. Kaplan-Meier analyses of overall, early, and late DR risk were performed, and statistical significance was evaluated by log-rank test and Cox proportional hazards regression. The prognostic contribution of BCI in addition to clinicopathologic factors was evaluated by likelihood ratio analysis. Results: Analysis of 307 patients (99% ER+, 53% T1, 42% N+, 70% grade II) showed significant differences in DR over 10 years based on BCI risk categories. BCI low- and intermediate-risk patients demonstrated similar DR rates of 7.6% and 8.0%, respectively, compared with 27.0% for BCI high-risk patients. BCI was a significant independent prognostic factor for overall 10-year DR [HR = 4.09; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.00-8.34; P = 0.0001] as well as for both early (HR = 8.19; 95% CI, 1.85-36.30; P = 0.0042) and late (HR = 3.04; 95% CI, 1.32-7.00; P = 0.0224) DR. In multivariate analysis, BCI remained the only statistically significant prognostic factor for DR (HR = 3.49; 95% CI, 1.28-9.54; P = 0.0150). Conclusions: BCI is an independent prognostic factor for ILC and significantly stratified patients for cumulative risk of 10-year, early, and late DR. BCI added prognostic value beyond clinicopathologic characteristics in this distinct subtype of breast cancer.