# Measurement of residual breast cancer burden to predict survival after neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-symmans-j-clin-oncol/  
OnCo record `paper-symmans-j-clin-oncol` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Paper cited by one term page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 17785706 and published in Journal of Clinical Oncology; the citing page links this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

Purpose: To measure residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in order to improve the prognostic information that can be obtained from evaluating pathologic response.

Patients and methods: Pathologic slides and reports were reviewed from 382 patients in two different treatment cohorts: sequential paclitaxel (T) then fluorouracil, doxorubicin, and cyclophosphamide (FAC) in 241 patients; and a single regimen of FAC in 141 patients. Residual cancer burden (RCB) was calculated as a continuous index combining pathologic measurements of primary tumor (size and cellularity) and nodal metastases (number and size) for prediction of distant relapse-free survival (DRFS) in multivariate Cox regression analyses.

Results: RCB was independently prognostic in a multivariate model that included age, pretreatment clinical stage, hormone receptor status, hormone therapy, and pathologic response (pathologic complete response [pCR] v residual disease [RD]; hazard ratio = 2.50; 95% CI 1.70 to 3.69; P <.001). Minimal RD (RCB-I) in 17% of patients carried the same prognosis as pCR (RCB-0). Extensive RD (RCB-III) in 13% of patients was associated with poor prognosis, regardless of hormone receptor status, adjuvant hormone therapy, or pathologic American Joint Committee on Cancer stage of residual disease. The generalizability of RCB for prognosis of distant relapse was confirmed in the FAC-treated validation cohort.

Conclusion: RCB determined from routine pathologic materials represented the distribution of RD, was a significant predictor of DRFS, and can be used to define categories of near-complete response and chemotherapy resistance.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 17785706 (DOI 10.1200/jco.2007.10.6823). Matched by DOI alone: one term page cites this DOI among its external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: Journal of Clinical Oncology
- Year: 2007
- DOI: 10.1200/jco.2007.10.6823
- Authors: Symmans WF, Peintinger F, Hatzis C, et al.
- What it means: One term page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- J Clin Oncol 2007: https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.2007.10.6823
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17785706/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/17785706

## Connected records

- terms: [Residual cancer burden (RCB)](https://onco.cc/terms/rcb/)
- journals: [Journal of Clinical Oncology](https://onco.cc/journals/jco/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/paper-symmans-j-clin-oncol.json