Hundreds of breast cancer patients could benefit from immunotherapy targeted at unusual genetic changes, British researchers have reported.
Within the UK, some 1,000 patients annually could benefit from treatment with checkpoint inhibitors, according to researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge.
They have found that a small number of patients have mismatch repair in their DNA mechanism.
The mutations are well known in other cancers but have not been often studied in breast cancer before.
The findings come from a study of 640 tumours. This found 11 tumours with mismatch repair defects.
The findings were reported in Cancer Research.
Researcher Dr Serena Nik-Zainal said: “We’ve unequivocally found mismatch repair deficient breast cancers. As these tumours have the same mutational signatures as those of other cancers, like colorectal cancer, they should in theory respond to the same immunotherapy drugs.
“Our results suggest expanding the cohort of cancer patients that could possibly be treated with checkpoint inhibitors to include these mismatch repair deficient breast cancer patients.”
Helen Davies et al. Whole-genome sequencing reveals breast cancers with mismatch repair deficiency. Cancer Research 3 September 2017; doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-17-1083
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