When Chemotherapy is Unnecessary?
February 12th 2010 -
At 50 to 60 percent of breast cancer patients, the axillary lymph nodes at diagnosis have not been affected. Metastases in other organs can be almost impossible. Physicians speak in this case a nodal-negative breast cancer, which means a significantly better prognosis for the patient as a nodal-positive breast cancer, in which the nodes are already affected by tumor cells. If you can clarify this distinction in advance, you will save many patients undergoing chemotherapy. A group of scientists has now found a marker that will allow a precise determination.
“Unfortunately, still get about 80 percent of all breast cancer patients with nodal negative breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy, although this would require only about 30 percent of the patients of this group,” says Edgar Dahl, Institute of Pathology at the University Hospital of Aachen. “The problem is that we do not yet know which patients belong to the 30 percent who have a high relapse risk is, therefore, recommended for most women, certainly the chemotherapy.”
This problem of About therapists to be solved in future by the molecular pathological analysis of tumor tissue. Dahl: “The genetic profile of the tumor puts enough information about its aggressiveness and so on recurrence risk of the individual patient. We have to learn to read the information properly to benefit them.”
Dahl and his group has found by examination of approximately 300 breast tumors, several genes, whose activity is lost in the tumor and which, presumably so-called tumor suppressor genes. Whose natural function is is to suppress tumor growth. One with the name ITIH5 could be crucial for predicting the chances of recovery of patients with nodal negative breast tumors. “Have patients with nodal negative breast cancer, where ITIH5 can be detected even in the tissue, according to our analysis a low risk of relapse and therefore a very good prognosis” says Dahl.
Such tumor markers are in the modern treatment of cancer patients and more important, however, the systematic discovery, validation and application in the clinic is still in its infancy. Dahl: “The better scientists understand the signaling pathways in the cancer cell, the individual can be matched in the future the therapy to the individual patient.”
Until that is achieved, however, would still take some time. For approximately 30,000 genes that must interact in various ways, to be investigated.
Remains relevant for the prognosis of breast cancer is early detection of the tumor. Dahl’s team is researching a new method of early detection of breast cancer through blood tests. “This is technically possible because tumors can deliver tiny quantities of DNA in the blood and thus we demonstrate the genetic changes in tumors with high sensitive methods to some extent in the blood.”
The research group has specialized in the detection of changes in the so-called DNA methylation. Methylation is a naturally occurring change in the DNA, which can lead to deactivation of tumor suppressor genes.
Tags: axillary lymph nodes, blood tests, chemotherapy, Methylation, prognosis, tumor cells
Leave a comment!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
