A simple blood test could soon make it possible not only to screen for breast cancer, but also to identify women at higher risk, thanks to the work of Montreal researchers.
This would make it possible to expand and facilitate screening for the disease, for example, by reaching women in remote areas or by sparing some women the discomfort of a mammogram.
“I am really interested in understanding how we can better screen for breast cancer in young women under the age of 50,” explained Dr. Saima Hassan, a researcher at the University of Montreal Hospital Center Research Center.
“We want to better understand whether we can use a blood test in women under the age of 50, under the age of 40, or even under the age of 30.”
The technology that Dr. Hassan and her colleagues are refining integrates laser technology with immune cell profiling to develop a cutting-edge blood test based on artificial intelligence, with the goal of detecting breast cancer earlier in young women.
This innovation comes at a time when the National Institute for Health and Social Services Excellence is recommending that women aged 45 to 49 be included in Quebec’s breast cancer screening program. Currently, only women aged 50 to 74 are invited to have a mammogram every two years.
In recent years, experts have also observed a worrying—and, for the moment, unexplained—increase in breast cancer cases among increasingly younger women.
The ability to quickly and easily identify those who have developed the disease, or who are at risk of developing it in the coming years, based on a simple blood test would therefore be a huge advantage.
“There are women who live far from major centers who could have access to better (screening),” said Dr. Hassan. “And mammograms are not a test that women like to undergo… So better access, but also an easier test.”
Researchers are currently busy comparing samples taken from women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer to samples from healthy women. This is how, Dr. Hassan said, artificial intelligence is “taught” the signals it needs to look for.
AI could even go further by refining its analyses based on the patient’s specific profile, taking into account criteria such as age or ethnicity, she added, which is in line with the concept of “precision medicine” that has been very popular for several years.“Artificial intelligence is an approach where we can combine different factors, because there are many different factors involved in the immune system, as well as biochemical elements, to identify the elements that are most important for detecting breast cancer,” explained Dr. Hassan.
But ultimately, she said, “to diagnose breast cancer and get the right treatment, we will always need a biopsy.”
The speed of the blood test would put it at the forefront, said Dr. Hassan, and would allow “stratification of patients” to identify those who need priority care.
A few more years of work will be needed to allow the technique to prove itself before it can be offered in the field.
This work, which also involves Dr. Réjean Lapointe, engineer Frédéric Leblond, and artificial intelligence expert Samuel Kadoury, is funded by the Canadian Cancer Society and the Lotte & John Hecht Foundation.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
