New blood test ‘can aid diagnosis and monitoring of breast cancer’

US scientists have been able to develop a new blood test that can detect the presence of advanced breast cancer and monitor response to treatment.

A team at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have created the cMethDNA assay, which has been shown to accurately detect the presence of cancer DNA in the blood of patients with metastatic breast cancers up to 95 percent of the time in laboratory studies.

Additionally, the researchers evaluated 58 blood samples from 29 patients with metastatic breast cancer to see whether the test could monitor response to chemotherapy. 

Within a fortnight, it detected a significant decrease in DNA methylation in patients with stable disease or in those who responded to treatment, which was not found in patients whose disease progressed regardless of the therapy.

Saraswati Sukumar, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, said: "Our assay shows great potential for development as a clinical laboratory test for monitoring therapy and disease progression and recurrence."

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, with around 48,000 women contracting the disease each year.