By Admin at 28 Oct 2015, 08:52 AM

Women who have undergone treatment for breast cancer often live with the fear that it may one day return. Most cases of recurrence occur within the first five years after treatment, and may affect up to 11 percent of women with a former breast cancer diagnosis (although rates vary depending on the type of breast cancer and treatment received).

Recurrence is usually detected during a follow-up mammogram or physical exam, or because symptoms prompted a patient to schedule a follow-up visit. However, a new blood test may offer a significantly better option, as it can identify patients at risk of a relapse months before tumors are visible on hospital scans.

The test uses a technique called “mutation tracking,” which detects cancer DNA in the bloodstream. Such mutations occur as cancer develops and spreads, and even after treatment there may be small numbers of cancer cells containing this mutated DNA left behind.

The study involved 55 breast cancer patients with early-stage disease who had been treated with chemotherapy and surgery. The patients received a blood test after surgery and then every six months thereafter in follow-up.

Those who tested positive for circulating tumor DNA had a 12 times greater risk of relapse than those who tested negative. Further, the cancer relapse was detected nearly eight months before any tumors were visible.

Study author Dr. Nicholas Turner, team leader in Molecular Oncology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, told Science Daily:

"We have shown how a simple blood test has the potential to accurately predict which patients will relapse from breast cancer, much earlier than we can currently. We also used blood tests to build a picture of how the cancer was evolving over time, and this information could be invaluable to help doctors select the correct drugs to treat the cancer. Ours in the first study to show that these blood tests could be used to predict relapse.”

Larger clinical trials are expected to begin using the technology next year, although it may still be several years before this blood test is widely available. The test represents the future of cancer care, which is moving toward personalized medicine that allows for non-invasive monitoring and testing that leads to tailored treatments to attack the weaknesses in a specific type of tumor.

The ability to detect a breast cancer relapse months earlier also allows for treatment to begin before more mutations occur and the disease becomes harder to treat, which could be potentially lifesaving.

Sources:
Science Daily August 15, 2015
Science Translational Medicine August 26, 2015

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