Test helps pick best therapy for breast cancer

A simple test could save lives by helping decide the best therapy for women with the hardest-to-treat form of breast cancer.

A simple test could save lives by helping to decide the best therapy­ for women with the hardest-to-treat form of breast cancer, a study suggests.

Knowing in advance that standard chemotherapy is ­unlikely to work would allow women with “triple negative” cancers to try other treatments immediately. Survival is likely to be improved if women can be given more suitable chemotherapy right away.

However, while the test is a relatively simple one for hospital pathology departments to perform, the method will need further­ studies before it is recommended for routine care, which is likely to be years away.

Thousands of women a year develop tumours known as “triple­ negative” because they lack any of the key receptors target­ed by modern drugs. This leaves ­patients reliant on chemotherapy to shrink tumour­s, alongside surgery.

A class called anthracycline-based chemotherapy is often used for such women but does not work for many. The study offers­ hope of picking out these women in advance of treatment and offering them alternatives by looking for levels of a protein called NUP98 in their tumours.

Women with higher levels of this protein did not respond as well to anthracycline chemotherapy, according to a study in the journal BMC Cancer.

Research­ers at Queen’s University Belfast looked at samples from 100 patients with triple negative cancers who had been given chemotherapy alongside samples from 40 healthy women. Three-quarters of those with low levels of NUP98 had not relapsed five years later, compared with less than half of those with high levels of NUP98.

The Times