Chemotherapy or not? Physicists study gene expression tests

Following surgery, patients with breast cancer are faced with the question of whether additional chemotherapy is necessary and really effective. It is important that these women do not receive too much treatment - but not too little treatment either. Physicists from Leipzig University modelled the gene expression tests and examined their usefulness on the basis of these models. Success in researching most effective methods for cancer therapy Professor Josef Käs from Leipzig University led these investigations in collaboration with the head of the Institute of Pathology Hamburg-West, Professor Axel Niendorf, and the independent statistical consultant Bernhard Ulm. They have just published their findings in PLOS ONE , a multidisciplinary journal that pays particular attention to whether experiments and data analyses have been conducted rigorously. Gene expression tests examine how active certain genes are in tumour cells. Often, these genes are related to characteristic features of cancer, such as tumour growth or invasion of surrounding tissue by tumour cells.