innovations to better fight against breast cancer

In the fight against breast cancer, there are plenty of extremely promising French innovations. With, for example, an application that allows screening with a simple phone.

Home Cancer Screening

Although breast cancer is very treatable when detected at an early stage, it is much more complicated at an advanced stage. And not all women get tested or not often enough (not very pleasant, not always easy to make an appointment…). Hence the interest in a tool that would allow screening from home. This is the mission that the French startup Hope Valley AI has given itself. They worked out two things. The first is an application, still in the testing phase. The app allows you to do a self-examination. In fact, we’ll do a selfie video regularly. The smartphone will generate a digital twin of the breast, to analyze changes that you would not have noticed, and which will be coupled with clinical data and a palpation guide. You could call it a pre-mammogram. All the data will be transmitted to a medical platform which will give you a preventive check-up every month. And in the event of an anomaly detected, we invite you to see a professional.

The next step is a small medical device called Mammope, an ultrasound device which allows you to carry out the examination from home and send the results directly to the doctor… It is a French nuclear researcher who got that worked out. This resolves one of the blind spots, which is that women are entitled to a mammogram every two years from the age of 50 (not before), because these are ionizing examinations, but many cancers will appear perhaps. be six months after the exam… And so, the cancer has a year and a half to develop before the next exam.

Saliva test and 3D printed prosthesis

There are other interesting innovations, for example a saliva test. Researchers have been working on this avenue for several years. We will look for certain specific biomarkers in a saliva sample, in particular changes in the sugar molecules present in cells, which can indicate inflammation or certain diseases such as cancer. In short, through a simple saliva test, we would be able to detect if the person has cancer, and what type of cancer it is. An incredible screening tool, but a little distant… The first clinical tests could take place within four or five years.

Innovations also in the field of breast reconstruction. A subject that is always very delicate: after overcoming cancer, returning to the operating table to put in place a prosthesis or an implant is really not easy. Here too, French technology, that of Lattice Medical. A Lille startup working on breast bioprostheses, with a 3D printed implant that looks like a sort of grid implanted under the skin, which will serve as a support, on which we will install the patient’s own tissues, which will regenerate . And in the end, the implant will resorb naturally. Less risk of rejection, infections, and extreme customization thanks to 3D printing. The first results of clinical tests are expected next year for marketing in 2026.