New Marker Could Detect Fatal Breast Cancer Earlier

Although receiving cancer news can feel like being hit with a freight train, the road to developing cancer is long and subtle. Before any signs or symptoms occur, cancer begins to grow at the cellular level, sometimes from a single malignant cell. in some forms of cancer, there are no symptoms until it is far too late for the damage caused to the body to be reversed. All of this can occur over a span of weeks, or years.

As time passes, cancer grows and spreads in the body, eventually metastasizing to distant organs if enough cancerous cells reach the blood and travel throughout the body. Catching cancer early is a difficult process. This is due in part to the fact that reaching a cancer diagnosis is often an uncertain road if there is no easily detectable tumor. The final, official confirmation of cancer is a tumor biopsy, in which a sample of the suspected cancerous tissue is examined in a lab and the cells are confirmed to be malicious.

There are, of course, numerous markers and indicators that a person has cancer beyond going in for a tumor biopsy. Some of these markers occur in the blood, and are especially easy to find if there are cancerous cells in the bloodstream. Unfortunately, by the time there are a detectable number of cancerous cells in the bloodstream, the cancer has progressed into later stages, where survival is less likely. Researchers have labored to find ways to catch cancer earlier and earlier, because every day that a cancer is allowed to grow, a person’s likelihood of surviving the cancer once it is found decreases.

As the methods of locating genetic markers and markers in the blood become more and more advanced, scientists and doctors are able to gain a clearer understanding of exactly what is going on, and how to treat any given cancer.

Now, a recent breakthrough in the study of breast cancer markers may permanently shift the tides in what has otherwise proven to be a fatal battle for many who suffer from aggressive, difficult-to-treat breast cancers.

DNA methylation

Cancer occurs when a cell’s DNA begins to function abnormally, causing the cell to grow and multiply without hindrance. Over time, after more and more cancer cells are grown in a single region, they begin to break off and enter the bloodstream, where they are carried to other sites. Though scientists are unsure of exactly what causes a cell’s DNA to malfunction in this way, they are able to look into the DNA of cancerous cells and clearly see malignant behavior.

A study authored by Professor Martin Widschwendter of University College London in the United Kingdom wanted to find a way to detect cancer in the blood before cancer cells entered the bloodstream. They reasoned that non-fatal breast cancers and fatal breast cancers were different in part by the means by which the cancer was allowed to travel throughout the body, and blood is the primary vehicle for metastasis—the often-fatal spreading of cancerous cells from one region to the rest of the body.

Read on to learn more about this important discovery and what it means for breast cancer diagnosis.