Digistain, a company born from research at Imperial College London, has made a significant breakthrough in breast cancer treatment.
Their new method, which predicts breast cancer survival rates quickly and accurately, has shown remarkable results in a major clinical trial.
This innovative approach was developed from a biopsy imaging technique created in Imperial’s Department of Physics.
It’s now evolved into a cutting-edge diagnostic tool by Digistain. This tool stands out because it can match the accuracy of genetic risk profiling methods but works faster and costs less.
The successful validation of this method was published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. According to Professor Carlo Palmieri, a Consultant in Medical Oncology at the Clatterbridge Cancer Center and co-author of the study, this method can precisely identify patients with low risk of disease recurrence. This could allow nearly half of the patients to avoid chemotherapy after surgery.
What makes the Digistain method unique is its speed compared to genetic methods, which typically require sending biopsy samples to specialized labs, often outside the UK. Digistain enables hospitals to analyze breast cancer biopsy samples on-site, without needing special chemical processes. Professor Palmieri sees this as a potential game-changer due to its ease of use and significant social impact.
The original imaging technique, developed by Dr. Hemmel Amrania and Professor Chris Phillips at Imperial, measures specific spectroscopic signatures in tumor biopsy samples. These signatures, linked to the chemical changes that occur with cancer, are analyzed using artificial intelligence. This helps determine the severity of the disease.
Dr. Amrania, who later founded Digistain, led the effort to patent this technology and develop a prototype for use in cancer diagnosis and decision-making. In the recent study, the Digistain test analyzed biopsies from over 800 early-stage breast cancer patients, effectively classifying them as low or high risk for cancer recurrence within the next ten years. The test’s accuracy is comparable to other risk stratification tools, with nearly half of the patients identified as low-risk.
Current methods for assessing the risk of breast cancer recurrence are slow, costly, and often involve sending samples abroad, primarily to the U.S. Dr. Amrania, the CEO of Digistain, emphasizes that their technology not only speeds up the process but also saves lives and money. It reduces the waiting time for results, which is crucial in cancer treatment, and potentially decreases the unnecessary use of chemotherapy.
This groundbreaking tool represents a major advancement in breast cancer care, offering faster, more accurate assessments, and paving the way for more personalized and effective treatment strategies.
If you care about breast cancer, please read studies about a major cause of deadly breast cancer, and common blood pressure drugs may increase death risk in breast cancer.
For more information about cancer, please see recent studies that new cancer treatment could reawaken the immune system, and results showing vitamin D can cut cancer death risk.
The research findings can be found in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.
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