2023-05-02 12:15:10
An international team of researchers has succeeded in developing a way to better prevent the progression from a possible preliminary stage of breast cancer to invasive breast cancer, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) announced in a press release on Tuesday. cooperated in the investigation.
The researchers studied the growth of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a precursor stage of breast cancer. DCIS is made up of abnormal cells in the milk ducts of the breast. In Belgium, it is detected in approximately 2,000 patients out of the 10,000 annual examinations thanks to the presence of splashes of calcium visible on the breast x-ray (mammography). These constitute an index of DCIS.
So far, however, it is not possible to predict which DCIS will turn into breast cancer. This is why almost all women who are affected are treated preventively by mastectomy or breast-conserving surgery, followed by radiotherapy and sometimes hormone treatment.
Avoid potentially unnecessary intervention
To avoid this potentially superfluous intervention in the future, the researchers set up a biobank of DCIS in order to better understand their evolution towards cancer. To do this, the researchers extracted DCIS cells from the human tissue of women and placed them in the milk ducts of mice. The growth of DCIS abnormalities, very different from each other, was then observed for a year.
Just under half of the mice developed invasive mammary tumors. The molecular study revealed that the presence of the HER2 protein increases the risk of breast cancer. Three-dimensional microscopy has shown that human DCIS cells exhibit two different growth patterns. In most mice that did not develop breast cancer, DCIS cells replaced mouse cells in the milk ducts. Conversely, breast cancer has developed when the milk ducts are, so to speak, “swollen” in contact with the DCIS cells.
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