Around 7,000 women in Switzerland are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. Treatment typically involves surgery followed by chemotherapy – with significant side effects such as hair loss, nausea, and a weakened immune system. Now, researchers at University College London have shown that a new gene test could make chemotherapy unnecessary for many patients.
The results were presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago. For the first time, the study included women with four or more affected lymph nodes – a group that had previously always received chemotherapy. When the test indicated a low risk of recurrence, only around five to six percent of patients experienced a relapse within five years. Adding chemotherapy reduced this figure by just two percentage points – a benefit that Jens Huber, Chief Physician at the Breast Centre of the Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen, describes as "remarkably small."
In practice, this means that women with a favourable test result may in future be able to forgo chemotherapy altogether. An important step towards more targeted, gentler cancer treatment – provided the results are confirmed in longer follow-up studies.
References
1. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/may/gene-test-can-safely-spare-many-breast-cancer-patients-chemotherapy (accessed June 1, 2026)
2. https://dailynews.ascopubs.org/do/optima-genetic-test-determined-chemo-noninferior-chemo-endocrine-early-breast-cancer (accessed June 1, 2026)
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