A type of cell could help warn women whether their breast cancer is likely to return, according to a new study. Changes in the cell's genetic material could pave the way to stopping a new tumour from growing, say scientists.
Breast cancer affects one in seven women in the UK and is responsible for 11,500 deaths every year. While treatments are available, including chemotherapy and surgery, the cancer often comes back months, sometimes years later.
Now scientists in the United States have identified a number of factors which could help predict whether it will grow back. Study author Professor Priscilla Furth, of Georgetown University Medical Centre, said: "About one in eight women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the developed world.
"We hope that our findings will help lead to more precise and directed screening in the future, sparing women unneeded procedures as we currently screen almost all women between the ages of 40 to 70, sometimes very aggressively.”
Breast cells which make up the ducts and lobes, and help produce milk during lactation, were analysed by the researchers. The cells were collected from breasts where cancerous tissue had already been removed through a process called a mastectomy.
They used an advanced technique dubbed conditionally reprogrammed cells (CRC) which was invented and patented by the university. CRC is the only known system capable of growing healthy as well as cancer cells, at a rate of up to a million per week.
The researchers looked for factors which could have kick-started a resurgence in cancer, focusing on the cell's entire collection of RNA sequences.
These sequences, known as the transcriptome, help determine when and where a cell's genes are turned on or off. Tiny pieces of tumour can remain undetected despite improvements in surgical techniques.
These are one of the factors contributing to the resurgence of breast cancer in up to 15 per cent of women, sometimes years after they've had surgery. Women who had chemotherapy before their surgery experienced significant changes in RNA, the researchers found.
In particular when it came to genes which are known to be signs of cancer.
Professor Furth said: "When a person is diagnosed with breast cancer, we have several tools, including testing for genes such as BRCA1/2, to decide whether they should get certain kinds of chemotherapy or just receive hormonal therapy. But the tools we have are not as precise as we would like."
RNA alterations could also have implications for women who have not had breast cancer, the researchers found.
In particular those which are linked to stem cells, which can change function and increase the risk of cancer if they become dysregulated.
Professor Furth said: "Many of our cancer survivors say to me, ‘please do work that will benefit my daughter'. My response is that’s why I’m in the field of cancer prevention.
“Anything we can do to prevent the occurrence or recurrence of cancer is a significant step forward and we think this finding may be an important contribution to reducing misdiagnosis as well as point to ways to develop better therapies to treat the disease.”
The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.
