NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) ─ The British Columbia Cancer Agency has agreed to reimburse for Genomic Health's Oncotype DX breast cancer recurrence test.
The multi-gene expression diagnostic is available in four other Canadian provinces in addition to British Columbia, including Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland.
"Understanding a patient's individual tumor biology gives us greater confidence in recommending a personalized treatment that is better suited for that patient," Stephen Chia, oncologist and clinical investigator with the BC Cancer Agency, said in a statement.
Chia conducted a study published last year in the European Journal of Cancer showing that when physicians used Oncotype DX to guide treatment strategies for women with early stage, invasive, hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, they changed their therapy recommendations 30 percent of the time. The same study also showed that the use of Oncotype DX in this subset of women was cost effective in British Columbia's publicly funded healthcare system.