As the start of the 29th edition of Pink Octoberannual campaign dedicated to the fight once morest breast cancer, a promising study was published this Friday in the Lancet Oncology, one of the leading cancer journals. It shows that we can slow the progression of certain cancers breast in spotting, in time, a genetic mutation at the heart of the tumours, then adapting the treatment Consequently.
Indeed, in the context of breast cancer, tumor cells evolve over time and, depending on certain mutations, can become resistant to the treatments used. The authors of this study, conducted by the oncologist François-Clement Bidard and carried out in several dozen French hospitals, therefore worked on one of these mutations: bESR1. According to them, this work is the first “to demonstrate significant clinical benefit following early targeting of the bESR1 mutation”.
Minimally invasive technique
To identify this mutation, caregivers used a technique called “liquid biopsy”. This aims to study the contents of tumors without having to take a sample, as in a classic biopsy, of the tissues of the breast itself, a potentially heavy and restrictive operation. A simple blood sample is enough: the blood of patients indeed contains a small part of DNA which comes from cancerous cells and which we know how to isolate and study better and better.
In patients carrying this mutation, two groups of around 80 people were formed. One continued to receive the original treatment, the other switched to another drug, fulvestrant. In the second group, cancer progression was halted for a longer median duration of several months.
Beyond the single bESR1 mutation, the authors of the study believe that the strategy used – use of liquid biopsy, then rapid change of treatment – might serve as a model for future therapeutic strategies.
“Triple negative” cancers excluded
However, these works include several limits. First, they do not assess whether this change in treatment ultimately really improved patient survival. Furthermore, only a certain type of breast cancer, in which the tumor is receptive to estrogens and hormonal treatments, has been studied. This excludes in particular so-called cancers “triple negative”, the deadliest because the most complex to treat.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in France and represents the leading cause of cancer death in women (12,000 deaths per year). One in eight French women is at risk of being affected, recalls the League once morest cancer. But “mortality has decreased thanks to treatment and screening”, underlined Pr Emmanuel Barranger, general manager of the Antoine Lacassagne center in Nice, Thursday during a press conference of the French Society of Senology and Breast Pathology.