Yasmina Kattou / Photo credit: ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN / ANP MAG / ANP via AFP
9:34 a.m., June 4, 2024
This week, the World Cancer Congress is being held in Chicago. The French institute, Institut Curie, presents a very promising new study for treating certain breast cancers and more particularly triple negative cancers.
While the WHO announces an increase in cancer cases of 77% by 2050, it is a race against time for doctors to ensure better care and better survival of patients. At the ASCO congress, the Institut Curie presents a study with significant hope. It could push to change the management and improve the survival of patients with triple negative breast cancer – aggressive and difficult to treat, because recurrences are numerous – by detecting relapses early.
Follow-up with a simple blood test
Today, after triple negative breast cancer, no follow-up is put in place to detect possible relapses. Patients are seen for consultation by doctors, but do not have medical examinations. It is only in the presence of symptoms that scans are prescribed to confirm a recurrence. Faced with this observation, the Institut Curie is conducting a study to determine whether monitoring, with a simple blood test, could increase the life expectancy of patients.
“It is in fact using the blood test which makes it possible to detect what we call circulating tumor DNA which are small DNA molecules which are released into the blood by the cancer which will put us on the trail of a possible relapse and this will therefore justify carrying out radiological examinations in search of relapse”, explains oncologist François Clément Bidard.
The objective is to implement treatments, while relapse is still limited. 450 patients are participating in the study. The first results, expected in 2027, could revolutionize care and save thousands of lives each year.
