DNA 'barcode' delivering personalised breast cancer care

SCIENTISTS in Cambridge say advances in genetics are set to transform the treatment of breast cancer, making it more personalised to each patient.

All women there diagnosed with breast cancer have their entire genetic code mapped.

Doctors say it is helping them chose the right treatment and predict whether patients are likely to experience side effects.

It can also reveal whether their cancer is becoming resistant to treatment. Carlos Caldas, Prof of Cancer Medicine and programme director at Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, said: “By sequencing the tumour we have something like a barcode which gives us the pattern of mutations in that cancer.

“We can understand how the body, and in particular the immune cells are responding and this enables us to deliver more precision medicine.

“This barcode also enables us to do surveillance and identify early whether a tumour is coming back because it is developing resistance to treatment - when those cells start releasing their DNA we can detect them in a blood test known as a liquid biopsy.”

To date, 275 women have joined the Personalised Breast Cancer Programme in Cambridge, which was launched in 2016 with just over £1m funding from Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust.

They aim to enrol 2,000 patients in the next four years.

Prof Caldas said: “Breast cancer is not one but 10 or 11 diseases that are distinct molecular entities and we will increasingly see patients being categorised into one of these groups, enabling us to tailor the way we monitor them; it’s a dramatic improvement in the way we personalise their treatment.”