Fig. 1

Flow chart of patients with breast cancer recruited to the clinical studies. For prognostic tissue studies, FFPE breast tumor samples (n = 1079) were obtained from archival cases at St. Vincent’s University Hospital and Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland from 1987–1999 and from 2004–2008, respectively. For prognostic serum studies, blood samples were collected from breast cancer patients attending the National University Hospital Galway and Beaumont Hospital from 1993–2006 and 2008–2014, respectively, prior to initial surgery for the resection of primary breast tumor (n = 346). For monitoring serum studies, pre-operative and serial post-operative samples were collected from patients with breast cancer enrolled in a multicenter Cancer Trials Ireland-led trial (ICORG 09/07;NCT01840293/(ClinicalTrials.gov)) from 2008–2014 (n = 181)