New Marker for Breast Cancer Aids in Personalized Treatment

Potential new marker for breast cancer that may help personalize their therapy has been discovered by a study at the University of Southampton, published in the journal Scientific Reports. The risk of developing breast cancer is found to be increased with higher body mass index (BMI), adipose tissue, or body fat.

Increased body fat surrounding the breast may results in gathering of inflammatory immune cells (macrophages) in the breast’s fat tissue, that form ‘crown-like structures’ with potential molecular biomarker on their (macrophages) surface called CD32B, thereby setting an inflammatory environment for further growth of breast tumors.

Potential Marker of Breast Cancer

The study team hence analyzed how these crown-like structures affect breast cancer progression and their therapeutic response (to a drug called trastuzumab — Herceptin®). These findings may help improve treatment standards for patients with HER2 positive overexpressed breast cancer.

“These findings will be of interest to clinicians and researchers involved in breast cancer treatment as they could potentially be used to develop personalised treatment in patients with HER2 positive overexpressed breast cancer. On the other hand, this study highlights how effective trastuzumab treatment is in patients that do not have the marker. So these patients could benefit from a lower dose of anti-HER2 therapy which may minimise the side-effects they experience. Further studies with more patients will be needed to help confirm these initial findings,” says Stephen Beers, University of Southampton.

Source-Medindia