Tumour profiling tests for breast cancer

These tests look at samples of the tumour to find how active certain genes are in the cancer cells. They do not look at inherited genes. The results help give information about the chances of the cancer coming back.

This can help you and your doctors make a more informed decision about having chemotherapy after surgery for breast cancer.

If the results show a low risk of the cancer coming back, you may not need chemotherapy. Your cancer doctor or breast care nurse can tell you more about this.

Your cancer doctor may suggest having tumour-profiling tests if your breast cancer:

• is ER positive cancer and HER2 negative
• has not spread to the lymph nodes
• is in an intermediate risk group (between low risk and high risk) for the cancer coming back in another part of the body.

We want everyone affected by cancer to feel our information is written for them.

We want our information to be as clear as possible. To do this, we try to:

• use plain English
• explain medical words
• use short sentences
• use illustrations to explain text
• structure the information clearly
• make sure important points are clear.

We use gender-inclusive language and talk to our readers as ‘you’ so that everyone feels included. Where clinically necessary we use the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ or ‘male’ and ‘female’. For example, we do so when talking about parts of the body or mentioning statistics or research about who is affected.

You can read more about how we produce our information here.