*4.11. Patient and Sample Characteristics*

Our cohort was composed of 105 breast cancer patients of Caucasian origin diagnosed in the Institute for the Care for Mother and Child and Medicon in Prague and Hospital Atlas in Zlin (all in the Czech Republic) during 2006–2013. Patients underwent neoadjuvant cytotoxic therapy with regimens based on 5-fluorouracil/anthracyclines/cyclophosphamide (FAC or FEC) and/or taxanes (*n* = 68) or postoperative adjuvant therapy using the same cytotoxic drugs (*n* = 37). The distribution of molecular subtypes was as follows: Luminal A 16%, Luminal B 24%, and triple negative 60%. These patients constituted the testing set in our previous study conducted by Hlavac et al. [57] and are characterized in detail in the article. Collection of blood samples and DNA Extraction were carried out according to standard procedures and described previously.
