Jean-Benoit Legault, The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — A new tool developed by researchers at Laval and McGill universities would make it possible to determine with an accuracy of approximately 95% the risk of seeing the cancer reappear in a patient who has undergone a resection of a lung tumour.
The teams of Professors Logan Walsh and Daniela Quail, from McGill University, and Philippe Joubert, from Laval University, came to this conclusion after analyzing tumors from 416 patients who had been operated on for lung cancer.
The samples came from the biobank of the Research Center of the University Institute of Cardiology and Pulmonology of Quebec-Laval University. The results were then validated on a cohort of 60 patients from the McGill University Health Center.
“We were able to profile these patients, characterize them,” said Dr. Joubert, who believes that having had access to such a quantity of tissue is at the very heart of their breakthrough. There are 1.6 million cells that have been analyzed.”
The researchers used mass cytometry imaging, a sophisticated technology that can distinguish individual cells, to characterize the different types of cells present in the microenvironment of each tumor as well as their location.
They then used artificial intelligence to associate the observable elements on these images with the risk of cancer recurrence. “We don’t do that anymore in the mitten as we did ten or fifteen or twenty years ago,” said Doctor Joubert.
Researchers have identified 35 markers that influence the risk of cancer recurrence. They claim to be now able, from a sample of only one square millimeter, to predict the risk of recurrence in a patient with unexpected precision.
“I would never have thought that we would be able to predict the risk of recurrence with such a performance, admitted Doctor Joubert. I was probably the most surprised person in the whole group.”
Only 30% of lung cancer patients are eligible for surgery, he said.
“Despite the fact that we completely remove the tumor in (…) surgery, even if we have the impression of having removed everything, there are still 30 to 40% of patients who will recur, so it is a quantity all the same important”, indicated the doctor Joubert.
This new approach could make it possible to quickly identify these patients, in the days following their surgery, in order to offer them the appropriate adjuvant treatments or closer follow-up examinations, so as to be able to intervene quickly in the event of a recurrence.
“It has a huge potential impact on the care of this clientele,” said Dr. Joubert.
However, there is still a lot of work to be done before clinical implementation can be considered, he warns. For example, simpler tools will probably have to be developed so that the approach can be used on a daily basis in a conventional laboratory.
The conclusions of this study are published by the prestigious scientific journal Nature.