Simple Blood Test Detects Breast Cancer

A simple blood test could one day be a more accurate way to test for the early signs of breast cancer than using mammograms to reveal abnormal growth.

The blood test could improve treatment by detecting whether breast cancer patients are likely to relapse and what chemotherapy their particular type of tumor will respond to in the future.

A collaboration between the University of Leicester (UK) and the Imperial College (London, UK) will take blood samples from women attending a breast screening clinic and compare the DNA in the blood of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer with those that do not have cancer to see what DNA markers are consistent.

In more than 80% of patients, tumor specific DNA can be detected in plasma, both on grounds of fragment size and tumor specific alterations. The scientists have successfully demonstrated genome-wide analysis of plasma DNA from cancer patients using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays and they are currently analyzing a large number of plasma samples from breast cancer patients on follow-up using this approach.


Charles Coombes, MD, PhD, professor of Oncology at Imperial College and coinvestigator, said, "This type of translational science is extremely promising and the international scientific community is collaborating on its development. When a woman has breast cancer we can tell by the DNA in their blood. But what we are trying to find out in our study is how early the signs of breast cancer show up in a blood test. So by looking at blood samples of women who have breast cancer diagnosed through screening we can see if the cancer is already showing in their blood.”

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University of Leicester
Imperial College