Women with incident and proliferative benign breast diseases (BBD) are likelier to develop breast cancer, a Spanish researcher explained during the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference in October. These findings support the idea of designing personalised breast cancer screening strategies to improve effectiveness.
Tumours with the same biology have different prognoses based on their method of detection, and this information should be taken into account when deciding which treatments might be needed, a Dutch researcher explained at the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference.
Is mammography still the best method for breast cancer screening? For a number of breast cancers, the latest scientific findings suggest otherwise. For more than a decade, Professor Christiane Kuhl MD, Director of the Clinic for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the University Hospital RWTH Aachen, has researched the use of MRI in breast cancer screening.
A team at Purdue University has developed a novel testing platform to evaluate how breast cancer cells respond to the recurrent stretching that occurs in the lungs during breathing. The technology is designed to better understand the effects that the local tissue has on metastatic breast cancer to study how metastases grow in a new tissue.
Breast cancers that are detected in the interval between national screening programme mammograms have a worse prognosis than those detected at the time of a screening, even if they have the same biology, according to research presented at the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference. Analysis of results from over eight years’ follow-up of the international MINDACT randomised phase III clinical…
For most women with early breast cancer, a single dose of targeted radiotherapy during surgery is just as effective as conventional radiotherapy, which requires several visits to hospital after surgery. This combination of targeted radiotherapy (restricted to the area around the tumour) given immediately after surgery is called targeted intraoperative radiotherapy. Conventional radiotherapy…
The accuracy of breast cancer diagnosis via diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI) was equivalent both before and after the administration of a gadolinium-based contrast agent (GBCA), despite a value change in DTI parameters, finds a new research article. “However,” wrote first author Anabel M. Scaranelo of Princess Margaret Cancer Centre’s breast imaging division in Toronto, “the limitations in…
Four stranded DNA structures – known as G-quadruplexes – have been shown to play a role in certain types of breast cancer for the first time, providing a potential new target for personalised medicine, say scientists at the University of Cambridge. In 1953, Cambridge researchers Francis Crick and James Watson co-authored a study published in the journal Nature which showed that DNA in our…
A team of British and American scientists have discovered a way to slow the growth of breast cancer stem cells in the lab. The study led by Dr Bruno Simões and Professor Rob Clarke from The University of Manchester could eventually lead to combination drug therapies on previously untreatable breast cancers. Around three quarters of women who have breast cancer have what are known as oestrogen…
At around 30.5 percent, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in countries of the industrialized world. The number of cases has doubled since the 1980s: about 69,000 times a year women are diagnosed with breast cancer. Triple-negative breast cancer is a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. As important receptors are missing here, treatment options and prognosis for such…
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Associate Professor Mikala Egeblad and her colleagues describe a newly understood way by which breast cancer cells sabotage a key player in the body’s immune system. That key player provides local immune surveillance by activating killer T-cells, but if it cannot mature and do its job, breast cancer cells can escape detection from the immune system,…
A receptor in the cell layer that lines the blood vessels from the inside stimulates both the formation of new blood vessels in tumors and metastasis.
Students from EPFL in Switzerland teamed up with startup IcosaMed to develop the SmartBra – the first piece of smart clothing that can be used for cancer prevention. “Our smart-clothing technology is designed to detect cancer at the earliest stages. It uses a non-invasive, painless method based on frequent ultrasound monitoring,” says Hugo Vuillet, one of the students on the development…
The world’s only online image-based COVID-19 diagnosis improvement tool for healthcare workers is launched by University of Sydney spinoff DetectED-X, drawing on its global experience and outcomes in breast cancer detection and patient cases from the coronavirus pandemic. The cloud-based technology will help doctors and radiologists diagnose cases faster and more accurately. Computed tomography…
A group of researchers led by Leif Schröder from the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) have found a way to detect metastases in certain types of cancer in the brain at an early stage, using only minimal amounts of contrast agent. To this end, the team uses a synthetic molecule that helps to detect the formation of new blood vessels, producing much more sophisticated…
A growth hormone called insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is likely to play a role in the development of breast cancer, according to new research published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology. IGF-1 is already known to encourage the growth and proliferation of cancer cells. Now, two analyses of information from several hundred thousand women enrolled in the UK Biobank study have…
Errors in breast imaging: the subject is vexing. How to avoid or address errors are also concerning. These subjects lay at the core of a presentation to radiologists during the recent annual congress of the British Institute of Radiology, when consultant radiologist Dr Rosalind Given-Wilson described the how, where, and what of errors or near misses, along with their impact on patients and…
Scientists from the project SOLUS (Smart optical and ultrasound diagnostics of breast cancer) under the EU funding framework programme Horizon2020 have developed a non-invasive, multi-modal, imaging system that uses ultrasound and light technologies to easily differentiate between benign or malignant lesions – without having to perform a biopsy. Similar to a pregnancy ultrasound appointment, a…
If chromosomes are unevenly distributed or otherwise altered during cell division, this normally damages the daughter cells and impairs their viability. Not in cancer cells, however, in which chromosome instability can actually confer a growth advantage under certain circumstances. Moreover, as scientists from the German Cancer Research Center have now demonstrated in mice, changes in the…
Scientists have created one of the most detailed maps of breast cancer ever achieved, revealing how genetic changes shape the physical tumour landscape. An international team of scientists, brought together by a £20 million Grand Challenge award from Cancer Research UK, has developed intricate maps of breast tumour samples, with a resolution smaller than a single cell. These maps show how the…
Biologists have discovered a way to stop cells from one of the most aggressive types of breast cancer spreading in the lab. The study points towards new avenues of research to combat the devastating disease. The results of the study of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer by the team from the Universities of Manchester, Glasgow and Sheffield and funded by Breast Cancer Now are published in Oncogene.…
A team of researchers from Osaka University, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, and Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. succeeded in reconstructing adipose tissue balls (“mini-breasts”) with a functional vascular network using patient-derived cells, achieving a high graft survival rate in small animal models. So far, silicone breast implants were primarily used in breast reconstruction following…
One of the causes of breast cancer may be inflammation triggered by harmful bacteria say researchers. Scientists say their idea – as yet unproven – is supported by the available evidence, which is that bacterial induced inflammation is linked to cancer. The paper in the journal Medical Hypotheses is by Lancaster University medical student Auday Marwaha, Professor Jim Morris from the…
A new type of scan that involves magnetising molecules allows doctors to see in real-time which regions of a breast tumour are active, according to research at the University of Cambridge. The research was now published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is the first time researchers have demonstrated that this scanning technique, called carbon-13 hyperpolarised imaging, can…
The updated guideline for estrogen and progesterone receptor (ER/PgR) testing in breast cancer, published jointly by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), reaffirms much of the original guidance and has more specific recommendations for handling and reporting cases with low ER expression. Globally, more than 1 million women are diagnosed…