World-first scanner to detect breast cancer signs years before the disease develops
A world-first breast cancer scanner arriving in Brisbane next year can detect deadly warning signs up to four years before cancer develops.
A world-first breast cancer scanner capable of detecting signs of the deadly disease before it forms will be launched in Brisbane next year.
The magnetic resonance spectroscopy scanner will be able to spot tiny chemical warning signs in breast tissue years before cancer develops.
The Australian Cancer Research Foundation centre for high-risk breast cancer in Brisbane will be home to the MRS scanner when it arrives next year.
Princess Alexandra Hospital familial breast cancer clinic director Ian Bennett said the new technology would be able to examine the biochemistry of the breast tissue.
“Our research involves the use of MRS, which is a special technology that uses a high-tech MRI scanner, and which assesses the biochemical nature of the breast tissue, particularly looking at the lipid metabolism of the breast tissue,” Dr Bennett said.
“It looks at things like phospholipids (and) cholesterol esters … and what we found is that in women who are about to develop breast cancer, we see these adverse or abnormal lipid changes occurring within the breast tissue.
“These changes can actually predate the development of breast cancer by up to four years.
“This method of monitoring actually gives us a much better handle on how we should be managing them and whether we need to intervene at any particular point.
“Providing their biochemistry remains normal, they could just continue on without having to do anything particularly different, apart from continuing to have their regular screening.”
Dr Bennett said detecting abnormal lipid changes years in advance provides a window of opportunity for high-risk women to intervene before they developed breast cancer.
“Women who are high risk, who fulfil the criteria to come to our clinic, they’ve got to have a lifetime risk of more than 30 per cent. General population risk is about 12 per cent,” he said.
“So if they have either a genetic mutation or a lifetime risk of more than 30 per cent, they are eligible to come to our clinic, and we offer screening starting from the age of 30 years, going to 65 years.”
Dr Bennett said the scanner could eventually be used for early detection of breast cancer.
“There is another extension to the project that we will be looking at in the future, and that is that this technology may also be applicable to ovarian cancer,” Dr Bennett said.
“A lot of these women who have the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations are also at increased risk of ovarian cancer. So it may also be a useful tool for monitoring their ovaries as well.”
The centre is backed by a $2.5 million grant from ACRF to the Princess Alexandra Hospital and Griffith University, with additional funding support committed by the National Breast Cancer Foundation and Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation to resource the centre.
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Originally published as World-first scanner to detect breast cancer signs years before the disease develops
