Researchers will look for DNA markers that differ in women who do and don’t have 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 spot a lump say researchers today, as Breast Cancer Awareness Month gets underway. They also hope the blood test could improve treatment by detecting whether breast cancer patients are likely to relapse and what drugs their particular type of tumour will respond to. This pioneering new clinical study - funded by Cancer Research UK in collaboration with the University of Leicester and Imperial College London - is about to start in the UK's largest breast screening clinic at Charing Cross Hospital , London. Researchers will take blood samples from women attending the 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. Professor Charles Coombes , co-investigator and Cancer Research UK's breast cancer expert at the Department of Surgery and Cancer , Imperial College London, 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're trying to find out in our study is how early the signs of breast cancer show up in a blood test.
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