New blood tests offer hope to breast cancer patients by spotting early stages of disease
Researchers hope to detect aggressive tumours early on to prevent disease spreading and making it incurable
A SIMPLE blood test could predict if breast cancer will spread.
The breakthrough could save lives by spotting fast-growing tumours at an early stage.
It follows the discovery that blood levels of a particular molecule surge if a cancer is aggressive.
The molecule - called endosialin - helps tumour cells get into the bloodstream.
That allows them to spread rapidly round the body.
Experts not only hope to develop a test to spot the molecule earlier but are calling on drug firms to develop medicines that target it.
Detecting fast-growing cancers early boosts the chances of survival.
More than 50,000 women a year in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer.
But it’s hard for doctors to tell which tumours are likely to spread rapidly.
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Once the disease migrates to another part of the body it becomes incurable.
Around 11,500 women and 80 men a year die from the disease because it has spread to other organs.
Scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg , found a group of cells - called pericytes - help cancer fragments enter the bloodstream by releasing endosialin.
It has not been clear up until now how tumour cells escape from tissue into the blood.
But for the study, published in Cancer Research, scientists grew pericytes in the lab and looked at what happened to cancer cells when they released the harmful molecule.
Study co-leader Professor Clare Isacke said: "We believe endosialin could be a useful marker of how likely a woman’s breast cancer is to spread around the body.
"And it might even be possible to block cancer spread by targeting this molecule with new drugs - something we plan to explore in future studies."
Baroness Delyth Morgan from the charity Breast Cancer Now - which funded the research - said: ‘This discovery paves the way for research that could help prevent and contain the spread of breast cancer.
"We’re hopeful this fundamental understanding could lead to new ways to identify patients at high risk of cancer spreading, who could be offered more intensive treatment.
"That endosialin could also be targeted by drugs is a really exciting prospect."