Instead of mammography
Scientists were able to determine breast cancer by blood test
Sofia Lutter, ERR
A team of scientists led by researchers from the University of Southern California has discovered that a special blood test, called a liquid biopsy, can determine whether a patient has breast cancer at an early stage. The results give hope that one day doctors will be able to detect breast cancer with a simple blood sampling.
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in the world, which every eighth woman faces during her lifetime. The standard way to check patients for breast cancer since 1976 has been X-ray mammography along with tissue biopsy. However, mammography does not always give the correct result, since healthy dense tissue can prevent the detection of cancer. According to the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, mammography sensitivity for breast cancer is about 87%. In addition, women living in poor isolated areas, where there are no polyclinics and hospitals, often do not have the opportunity to have a mammogram. Others simply do not undergo this examination regularly.
Tissue biopsy also cannot be called a 100% reliable method. Although it can reveal information about the tumor, it has limitations. Doctors take a sample only from a small area and cannot capture the entire volume of the tumor. Tissue biopsy is also invasive and painful.
Together, the shortcomings of diagnosis with mammography and tissue biopsy lead to the fact that some patients are not diagnosed until the tumor grows and spreads. Therefore, scientists are striving to develop new techniques. One of them is a liquid biopsy of CSI-Cancer. This method is carried out using a standard blood sampling from a vein in a doctor's office. Once in the laboratory, the sample is examined for signs of cancer.
As part of the study, Peter Kuhn, an oncologist physicist at the University of Southern California, and his team worked with 100 patients with breast cancer - both in the early and late stages, as well as with 40 patients without this disease. The study was conducted from April 2013 to January 2017 in various clinical centers in the USA.
The team tested the hypothesis that a liquid biopsy can detect many cancer biomarkers, including so–called oncosomes - microscopic membrane vesicles that are secreted by cancer cells.
"We found out that in the vast majority of patients with breast cancer at an early stage, these oncosomes are at a very high level," says Peter Kuhn.
According to the scientist, the diameter of these bubbles is about 5-10 microns, that is, they are the size of a cell. Researchers first discovered these biomarkers in prostate cancer about a year and a half ago.
"At the moment, this is only the result of the study, and we still need to demonstrate the clinical benefit," Kuhn notes.
If further studies yield similar results, it could mean that a new generation of liquid biopsy could become a diagnostic tool for early detection of breast cancer and other cancers. The test can also inform patients who have been treated about whether the signs of the disease persist or not.
"I usually bring bad news. I say, "You have cancer in your blood," says Kuhn, "but such a test may give hope that we can detect cancer at a very early stage and improve treatment and survival."
The results of the study were published in the journal npj Breast Cancer (Setayesh et al., Multianalyte liquid biopsy to aid the diagnostic workup of breast cancer).
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