Reassignment of HER2 status for subgroups of breast cancer according to the 2018 updated American Society of Clinical Oncology and College of American Pathologists guidelines: The impact of combined immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) reflex testing in a large national reference laboratory.

Abstract

3144 Background: Updated ASCO/CAP Guidelines for HER2 testing in breast cancer have been most impactful on the resolution of certain challenging groups of FISH results. We review the change in assignment of HER2 status in a large series of breast cancers referred to a large national reference laboratory for FISH testing since the introduction of the 2018 updated guidelines. Methods: Patient samples submitted to the Mayo Clinic Cytogenetics Laboratory (N = 2208) were analyzed by FISH. Samples with Group 2, Group 3, or Group 4 FISH results were reflexed to immunohistochemistry (IHC) in our central laboratory; FISH slides for those cases with equivocal 2+ IHC results were re-scored in the regions of invasive cancer showing more intense membranous staining. A subset of 202 samples with Group 4 FISH results were also reflexed to the previously employed reflex FISH assay (HER2/D17S122), and these were also re-analyzed according to the new reflex IHC/FISH process. Results: 382 of 2208 breast cancer samples tested (17.3%) had FISH results categorized as Group 2 (N = 17, 0.8%), Group 3 (N = 34, 1.5%), or Group 4 (N = 331, 15%) and required reflex IHC testing, and of those, 75% were 2+ equivocal and required targeted re-analysis of the FISH slide according to the 2018 updated guidelines. Re-analysis of the FISH slide resulted in switching between Groups 1-5 in 19.4% of cases, but HER2 status was changed by FISH re-scoring in only 7.7% of cases re-scored (1.0% of all samples), generally due to only minor shifts in HER2 copy number and HER2/control ratios between the initial and IHC-guided reflex FISH scores. In the subset of 202 cases tested by both reflex methods, the previously employed HER2/D17S122 reflex probe set was positive in 123 cases (60.9%), whereas reflex IHC/FISH was positive in only 10 cases (7.9%). Including positive reflex IHC (0.4%) and positive reflex FISH results (2.1%), the overall assignment of positive HER2 status on our series of 2208 cases was 11.5%. Conclusions: Overall rates of HER2 positive FISH results have declined under the most recent ASCO/CAP guideline update as a consequence of new recommendations for reflex testing for Groups 2-4. This change is largely due to reassignment of Group 2 and Group 4 results as negative in the absence of positive IHC.