Scientists have developed a new monitoring test for patients with early stage breast cancer, it was announced last night.
This highly sensitive blood test was created by a team at the Translational Genomics Research Institute, Arizona, USA, together with scientists at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.
They say the technique, TARDIS (TARgeted DIgitial Sequencing), could be up to 100 times more sensitive than existing tests, and could allow more tailored treatments and avoid unnecessary operations.
Full details are published in Science Translational Medicine today (7 August).
The test analyses circulating tumour DNA, allowing continuous monitoring of treatment success.
It was investigated in a trial of 80 blood samples from 33 women with early-stage and locally advanced breast cancer – and found to identify circulating tumour DNA in every patient before they started treatment.
“Until now, blood tests for breast cancer have only been sensitive enough to reliably identify tumour DNA in people with advanced disease,” said researcher Dr Muhammed Murtaza.
“We’ve shown that TARDIS is able to detect circulating DNA at extremely low concentrations in the blood, opening up the possibility of monitoring patients with early-stage breast cancer to find out how their disease is responding to treatment.”
Next, the researchers will run a larger study with more than 200 patients, to further validate the effectiveness of the test. They hope that eventually, similar techniques could be used to monitor other types of cancer that are treated with drugs or radiotherapy before surgery.
Murtaza, M. et al. Science Translational Medicine 7 August 2019
https://stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aax7392
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