Breast Cancer Blood Test Hailed As A Breakthrough
A new type of “ultra-sensitive” blood test can predict if breast cancer will return in high-risk patients long before they relapse and symptoms show up on scans, according to scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London, England.
The research team conducted a study using an ultra-sensitive liquid biopsy to identify tiny amounts of a cancer tumor’s DNA that is released in the bloodstream by cancer cells. The test was so sensitive that the scientists were able to identify all participants in the study whose breast cancer returned after a period of time.
ICR investigators hope the test results will open the door to a new approach for treating recurrent breast cancer where therapy can begin much earlier without waiting for the cancer to develop into a more advanced stage.
“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,” Professor Kristian Helin, ICR’s Chief Executive and President, said in a news release.
The test results were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago in June.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in American women, except for skin cancers, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS), which estimates 310,720 women will be diagnosed with the disease and about 42,250 will die from it in 2024. While the majority of people diagnosed with breast cancer are women, men also develop the disease. The ACS reports an estimated 2,790 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in men, and about 530 will die of the disease in 2024.
What’s more, breast cancer is also the most common form of cancer in women worldwide. The World Health Organization reported that 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022, and 670,000 died that year.
Breast cancer has the potential to return and when it does, it usually is at a more advanced stage. However, results of the new blood test show that detecting a recurrence early on gives patients a better chance of survival.
“It is very exciting to see advances in technology that can detect cancer cells and DNA with greater sensitivity to pick up residual disease or detect the early signs of breast cancer recurrence while a cure is still possible,” Helin added.
Dr. Simon Vincent, Director of Research, Support, and Influencing at Breast Cancer Now, cannot emphasize enough the potential the blood tests have on the future of advanced treatment of breast cancer recurrence.
“Early detection is one of our greatest weapons against breast cancer, and these initial findings, which suggests new tests could be able to detect signs of breast cancer recurrence over a year before symptoms emerge, are incredibly exciting,” Dr. Simon Vincent said in a news release.
The novel study was partly funded by Breast Cancer Now, a breast cancer charity based in the United Kingdom and the U.S.-based company Personalis, Inc., the makers of the NeXT Personal Test, which can detect the earliest traces of cancer recurrence.
New Study Goes Further Than Previous Trials
Previous cancer studies have found that ctDNA (circulating tumor DNA) blood tests can also detect a relapse long before it shows up on a scan. CtDNA refers to DNA that comes from cancerous cells and tumors. However, these blood tests typically use a technique called “whole exome sequencing,” which looks for between 16 and 50 mutations.
The ICR’s blood test used whole genome sequencing, but researchers took it one step further by searching for up to 1,800 mutations. This makes it much more sensitive and includes a larger number of cancer-related changes that could occur in a patient’s DNA.
“A more sensitive test is very important for this group of early breast cancer patients as they tend to have a very low amount of cancer DNA in their blood,” Dr. Isaac Garcia-Murillas, Staff Scientist in the ICR’s Molecular Oncology Group, said in a news release.
The ICR research team analyzed blood samples from 78 patients with different types of early breast cancer. The samples were collected when the women were diagnosed before their therapy, after their second cycle of chemotherapy, and after their surgery. The tests were repeated every three months during follow-up for the first year. After that, blood samples were collected every six months for the next five years.
The results from 78 patients showed that:
- 11 women were correctly identified as a high risk for cancer recurrence, and these 11 women relapsed during the five-year trial.
- CtDNA was not detected in 60 women, and none of these women experienced a relapse.
- CtDNA was detected once in three patients but further showed it had disappeared.
The ICR did not provide full data on the remaining four patients.
ICR researchers believe ultra-sensitive blood tests could offer a better way to monitor patients on a long-term basis, particularly those whose cancer is at high risk of returning. What’s more, Dr. Garcia-Murillas believes the new study “lays the groundwork for better post-treatment monitoring and potentially life-extending treatment in patients.”
Although the research is still in its early stages, Dr. Vincent said that 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.”
With thousands of people dying every year from breast cancer, Dr. Vincent said breakthroughs like ICR’s new blood test “are urgently needed so that we can stop people losing their lives to this devastating disease.”
Source Links:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/02/predictive-blood-test-hailed-as-incredibly-exciting-breast-cancer-breakthrough
https://www.icr.ac.uk/news-archive/asco-2024-new-ultra-sensitive-blood-test-predicts-recurrence-of-breast-cancer-months-or-even-years-before-relapse
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/breast-cancer/about/how-common-is-breast-cancer.html#
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/breast-cancer-in-men/about/key-statistics.html
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/breast-cancer
