Breast Cancer.

Based on current incidence rates, an American woman has a 1 in 9 chance of developing breast cancer at some time during her life.1 According to the American Cancer Societ Assistant y, in 2001, there were 192,200 new cases of invasive breast cancer and 47,100 cases of in situ disease in the United Profe States. That same year 40,200 American women died of the disease. This chapter considers the molecular pathology of breast cancer, focusing on the biomarker assays that are currently used in clinical management of the disease, excluding discussion of serum diagnostics, genetic predisposition testing, microarray-based RNA expression profiling, and micrometastasis detection, which are covered elsewhere in this book. The chapter concludes with a brief section on potential future assays, including the emerging field of pharmacogenomics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]