Immune cell "hotspots" can indicate women facing a high risk of breast cancer relapse after successful treatment, British researchers report today.
A computer analysis conducted during a clinical trial at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, found that some women have clusters of immune cells in and around the sites of tumours.
This showed that these women faced a 25% increased risk of disease relapse within ten years of starting treatment.
The findings are reported today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The researchers used tissue samples from 1,178 women.
Researcher Dr Yinyin Yuan, team leader in computational pathology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: “We have developed a new, automated computer tool that makes an assessment of the risk of relapse based on how cells are organised spatially, and whether or not immune cells are clustered together in the tumour.
“In the most common form of breast cancer, oestrogen receptor positive, the presence of hotspots of immune cells clustered together in the tumour was strongly linked to an increased risk of relapse after hormone treatment.
“Larger studies are needed before an immune hotspot test could come to the clinic, but in future such a test could pick out patients at highest risk of their cancer returning. It might also be possible to predict which patients would respond to immunotherapy."
He added: “The samples used in our study already form part of routine clinical practice, which means that implementing an immune hotspot test would be relatively easy and cost-effective.”
The Institute’s chief executive Professor Paul Workman said: “What this study also tells us is that the immune system probably has a key role to play in how breast cancer responds to hormone treatment.
"Measuring the immune response to cancer could be important in future to help identify patients who could benefit from immunotherapy.”
Journal of the National Cancer Institute 4 August 2017
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