New prognostic factors in breast cancer.

For many years, the age of the patient, the condition of axillar lymph nodes, the size of the tumour, histological traits (in particular histological grade of malignancy and invasion of lymphatic vessels), condition of hormonal receptors and HER2 represented principal factors used for the stratification of breast cancer patients for the purposes of evaluating the prognosis and determining the appropriate strategy of treatment. Although the variables are useful for the prognostic evaluation of individual groups of breast cancer patients, their role in determining the individual risk level of the patient and in the selection of supplementary treatment is quite restricted. This article shows the prognostic value of additional parameters, whose expression is associated with chemioresistance (MRP2, BCRP, YB1) or individual assessment of the dynamics of tumor progression (S100P, BUBR1). In addition, it describes the role of an online database of "The Kaplan-Meier plotter" which contains the assessment of the effects of expression of various genes on the clinical outcome of patients with breast cancer.