Scientists from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a special test.
This test can help doctors predict how fast breast cancer might get worse in patients who’ve just started their treatment.
This test is still in the research phase. It can find traces of cancer DNA in the blood samples of patients who are getting treated for breast cancer.
Specifically, it looks for changes in nine genes that are usually affected in breast cancer. One such change is called methylation, which is a chemical mark linked with cancer.
The test found that patients who had more methylation in their genes after four weeks of treatment didn’t do as well as those who had less methylation.
Their cancer got worse faster and their overall survival time was shorter.
The lead researcher, Dr. Kala Visvanathan, said that this test could be very helpful for patients with advanced breast cancer.
Since this type of cancer can be different in different patients, having a test like this can help doctors adjust the treatments more effectively. This could lead to better results and longer survival times.
Dr. Visvanathan added, “If we could detect changes earlier, we could adjust treatments earlier, if necessary, with the goal of achieving better clinical outcomes and prolonging survival.”
This test is called LBx-BCM. It was developed in the lab of Dr. Saraswati Sukumar. It works with a machine called GeneXpert that is used for testing genes.
The test can be done in less than five hours and it doesn’t require much work from the lab technicians.
The researchers used this test on blood samples from 144 patients with advanced breast cancer. These samples were taken before the treatment started and after four and eight weeks into the treatment.
They found that patients who had more methylation after four weeks of treatment had shorter survival times compared to those who had less methylation.
The Future of the Test
Dr. Sukumar said, “To our knowledge, this is the first methylation-based prediction model focused on early disease progression in patients with metastatic breast cancer.”
The researchers are now planning to improve this test. They want to find out the best time to measure methylation.
They also want to see how well this test works with other patients, including those with early-stage breast cancer.
If you care about cancer, please read studies about a major cause of deadly breast cancer, and new cancer vaccines could prevent cancer recurrence.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about how drinking milk affects the risks of heart disease and cancer and results showing vitamin D supplements could strongly reduce cancer death.
The study was published in Clinical Cancer Research.
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