Source- Skynews.com
According to London’s Institute of Cancer Research, a new ultra-sensitive blood test can spot signs of breast cancer years before it happens in high-risk patients.
The team of researchers employed a highly sensitive liquid biopsy to identify residual cancer DNA in the body after treating early breast cancer.
The findings, which were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) annual meeting, involved analyzing blood samples from the ChemoNEAR sample collection study for circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) that is released into the bloodstream by cancer cells.
The researchers, based at the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Center, were able to identify all patients from the study who later went on to relapse by detecting very low levels of cancer found in the blood, known as molecular residual disease.
Speaking at the presentation Chief Executive of the ICR, Professor Kristian Helin, said:
“Breast cancer is much easier to treat before it spreads to other parts of the body, so it is vital to be able to detect signs of recurrence of the disease as early as possible to give people the best chance of survival’.
By helping to spot the patients most likely to relapse, the ICR scientists hope the results will pave the way for a new strategy for treating recurrent breast cancer where treatment can be started much earlier, without waiting for incurable, advanced disease to develop and show up on a scan.
While this research is still in its early stages, catching breast cancer recurrence earlier means treatment is much more likely to destroy the cancer and stop it from spreading to other parts of the body, at which point it becomes incurable. With approximately 11,000 deaths annually due to secondary breast cancer, it is crucial to have these breakthroughs to save lives from this devastating disease.
