Customised treatments and better survival rates thanks to breast cancer diagnosis test: Laura Johanna van ’t Veer named finalist for European Inventor Award

• European Patent Office (EPO) nominates Laura Johanna van 't Veer for her ground-breaking invention in the area of cancer diagnostics
• Gene-based test enables women and their doctors to make informed
  decisions early on about the most appropriate treatment of breast cancer
• New patented method significantly decreases use of chemotherapy
  after surgery
• From Amsterdam to San Francisco: Dutch researcher, entrepreneur and pioneer of cancer diagnostics now resides in California
• EPO President Battistelli: "Predictive genetic testing makes individualised breast cancer treatment possible."

Munich/Amsterdam, 21 April 2015 - Seeing the future: thanks to Dutch inventor Laura Johanna van 't Veer (58) this is finally possible. And that with one of the most serious illnesses there is - breast cancer. It's all made possible by her ground-breaking invention, a gene-based tissue test which can give women in the early stages of breast cancer a clear and reliable prognosis of whether they have a risk for recurrence, or if their successful recovery is possible without chemotherapy. It has been a remarkable success so far. Thanks to van 't Veer's method, 20 to 30 per cent of breast cancer patients are able to forego the aggressive, drawn-out toxic chemical treatments. For her pioneering achievement, the European Patent Office (EPO) has named Laura Johanna van 't Veer one of three finalists for the 2015 European Inventor Award in the category "small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)". The winners of the 10^th edition of the annual innovation award will be announced at a ceremony on 11 June in Paris.

"Laura Johanna van 't Veer's invention marks a milestone in individualised medicine, enabling patients to make the right treatment choices at diagnosis for such a serious disease as breast cancer on the basis of genetic screening," said EPO President Benoît Battistelli, announcing the finalists for this year's award. "Her method could pave the way for more pertinent diagnostics also in other forms of cancer."

The key lies in genetics
Van 't Veer's invention is nothing less than a profound change of paradigm in identifying high-risk patients for cancer recurrence. In the 1970s, scientists would have never thought that gene activity determines whether or not tumours will return in the human body after cancer treatment. However, van 't Veer succeeded in becoming the first scientist to prove the widely opposed hypothesis that post-cancer metastasisis genetically driven ("seed and soil" theory). The biologist and her team at the Netherlands Cancer Institute found out in 2001 that there is a specific DNA signature made up of 70 genes that can indicate if a breast cancer patient has a predisposition for cancer metastasis.

Putting this ground-breaking discovery to good use, the Dutch scientist developed a truly revolutionary test which, by taking just a small tissue sample from the breast cancer, is able to measure the activity of cancer-specific genes with the help of a microchip. Within 10 days of performing the test it can be deciphered how aggressive a breast tumour is. The clinical implementation of this test has revolutionised cancer diagnostics.

Thanks to the test, the approximately 1.7 million women (according to WHO statistics from 2012) are confronted with breast cancer every year can now receive the exact information needed to decide whether or not they want to undergo the physical and mental stress of chemotherapy. Without the use of this technology, one in every three cancer patients would go through unneeded rounds of chemotherapy treatment with all its side effects, making this a quantum leap in diagnostics. It is highly beneficial for patients with a low-risk of secondary cancers. Thanks to the Dutch inventor, the days where doctors had to make a prognosis based solely on size of the tumour, age of the patient and number of divided cancer cells, are now a thing of the past.

"It gives me a good feeling that they don't have to be treated necessarily with something that has so many side effects," says van 't Veer.

Patent paves the way for successful business development

Leveraging the patenting of her invention in 2001, van 't Veer and her research partner René Bernards founded a start-up company, Agendia, which launched the genetic test on the market in 2004 under the name MammaPrint. Today, the test has already helped more than 40 000 women in 34 countries. Based in Amsterdam and Irvine, California, Agendia is currently ranked among the world's 14 leading molecular diagnostics firms by revenue, with a staff of 110 employees and turnover of about EUR 20 million in 2014. The market for genome analyses is forecasted to grow to EUR 4.3 billion by 2016.

An inventor's life between San Francisco and Amsterdam
Anyone who hopes to catch Laura Johanna van 't Veer in her free time should also be on the go in the international arena. To stay creative, the inventor spends her free time rowing on the coast of San Francisco, the city she now calls her home and where she works as a professor at the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the University of California. Nevertheless, you can also find her rowing on the Amstel in her hometown of Amsterdam. She periodically makes trips back with her international team of scientists to research further developments against cancer, for example a new prognosis profile for colon cancer currently being developed. Her ongoing research is also reflected in more than 230 papers she has published in various renowned scientific journals over her more than 20 years of work in the field.

Additional resources

• Read more about the inventor
• View the patent: EP1410011

The start of a new era

In a series of ground-breaking discoveries and methods, van 't Veer's invention led the way to individualised medicine making it possible for patients to pick the right treatment for them at diagnosis. Read more about personalised medicine.

• Ten years of the European Inventor Award: a retrospective look at the inventors and ideas that have changed our lives
• About the European Patent Office (EPO)
• Study on the economic impact of patents and other IP rights

Contacts:

Rainer Osterwalder
Director Media Relations
European Patent Office
Tel. +49 (0)89 2399 1820
rosterwalder@epo.org

Jeremy Philpott
Project Manager
European Patent Office
Tel. +49 (0)89 2399 1805
jphilpott@epo.org

Janneke van Amsterdam
Shepard Fox Communications Netherlands
Tel. +31 641 29 10 56
janneke.vanamsterdam@shepard-fox.com

Ellen Wonder
Shepard Fox Communications Netherlands
Tel. +31 654 33 88 60
ellen.wonder@shepard-fox.com