MADRID, 11 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Liquid biopsy can help identify poor-prognosis breast cancer patients earlier and more accurately, according to a new study from the University of Eastern Finland and the University Hospital of Kuopio, Finland. The results are published in the specialized magazine ‘Cancers’.
As the research team recalls, the prognosis for breast cancer has continued to improve in Western countries. In Finland, for example, almost 90 percent of breast cancer patients are alive five years after their diagnosis.
However, there are significant differences in the prognosis of the different subtypes of breast cancer, and, in addition, it ends up reappearing in approximately 20-30% of patients. Therefore, identifying patients with a poor prognosis from a large number of patients earlier and with more precision than before is key to reducing mortality from breast cancer.
Thus, liquid biopsy has been proposed as a possible tool to detect patients with poor prognosis breast cancer. At best, liquid biopsy using circulating markers released by cancer cells can provide a more complete picture of the cancerous tumor. It can also help identify features of breast cancer with a poor prognosis that would be missed by traditional screening methods.
THE HIGH INTEGRITY OF THE CIRCULATING DNA IS ASSOCIATED WITH A POOR PROGNOSIS
Thus, the present study investigated the integrity of circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in patients with breast cancer, and the association of this integrity with the prognosis of breast cancer.
“High integrity was found to be associated with poor prognosis, and that it is a prognostic factor independent of traditional prognostic factors,” says study first author Maria Lamminaho. “The integrity of cfDNA is known to be higher in breast cancer patients than in healthy controls or in patients with benign breast tumors,” says Dr. Hanna Peltonen, one of the authors.
“However, the association of cfDNA integrity with breast cancer prognosis has been much less studied, and our research provides much-needed additional evidence for this association,” says Peltonen.
The study used extensive patient data from the Kuopio Breast Cancer Project (KBCP), which began in the 1990s, allowing a more comprehensive analysis of patient survival than previous studies.
“KBCP patients have been monitored for almost three decades, which is an exceptionally long follow-up period even compared to other countries. Furthermore, it provides an excellent basis for assessing the long-term survival prognosis of patients,” he says. Peltonen.
TOWARDS A MORE ACCURATE FORECAST IN AN EARLY PHASE
The results are especially interesting because the study focused on breast cancer patients whose prognosis was good when traditional prognostic factors were measured. For example, by analyzing cfDNA integrity from a group of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer patients (whose prognosis is generally considered good), the researchers were able to distinguish a group of patients whose prognosis was significantly worse than that of the rest of the group. .
“Our results show that, in conjunction with traditional prognostic factors, measuring cfDNA integrity can help us in the future to identify poor-prognosis breast cancer patients earlier and more accurately than before. This would allow us to patients requiring more intensive care receive earlier care and follow-up, “says Professor Arto Mannermaa, University of Eastern Finland.
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