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Cancer Treatment: Types of Biomarker Tests

Learn about the different tests can help guide treatment. Stay up to date by signing up for our community newsletter.

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Biomarkers Used for Treatment Selection

The following biomarkers may be used to select treatment for cancer. This is not a complete list of all biomarkers and available treatments. Additional biomarkers may be used to for clinical research studies. Speak with your doctor about additional testing which may help guide your treatment.

Biomarker	Cancers	Treatment
AKT1, PIK3 or PTEN mutation	Breast	Truqap (capivasertib)
BRAFV600E	Colorectal Melanoma	BRAF inhibitors
BRCA1 BRCA2	Breast Ovarian Pancreatic Prostate	PARP inhibitors
Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)	Colorectal	EGFR inhibitors
ESR1 mutation	Breast	Oserdu (elacestrant)
Positive for FRα (folate receptor-alpha)	Ovarian	Elahere (mirvetuximab soravtansine)
Hormone receptor-positive (HR-positive) Estrogen/progesterone receptor-positive (ER/PR-positive)	Breast Endometrial	Aromatase inhibitors (AIs) CDK4/6 inhibitors Selective estrogen receptor degraders (SERDs) Selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs)
HER2-positive	Breast Colorectal Pantumor (Enhertu)	Anti-HER2 therapies Tukysa (tucatinib)
HER2-low	Breast	Enhertu (trastuzumab deruxtecan)
Homologous recombination deficiency (HRD)	Ovarian	Lynparza (olaparib) Lynparza and Avastin (bevacizumab)
Homologous recombination repair (HRR) gene mutations (tumor mutations in the following genes): ATM, BARD1, BRCA1, BRCA2, BRIP1, CDK12, CHEK2, FANCA, FANCL, MLH1, PALB2, RAD51B, RAD51C, RAD51D, MRE11A or NBN	Prostate	Talzenna (talazoparib) and Xtandi (enzalutamide)
KRAS or NRAS mutation	Colorectal Melanoma	EGFR inhibitors
Microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) Mismatch repair deficient (dMMR or MMR-D)	Colorectal Endometrial Pan-tumor	Immune checkpoint inhibitors
NTRK fusion	Pan-tumor	Vitrakvi (larotrectinib)
PD-L1 positive	Breast	Tecentriq (atezolizumab)
PIK3CA mutation	Breast	Piqray (alpelisib)
RET gene fusion	Pan-tumor	Retevmo (Selpercatinib)
TMB-H (Tumor mutational burden-high)	Pan-tumor	Keytruda (pembrolizumab)