Computer Test Could Spot Early Signs of Breast Cancer

This computerized test can read images of breast cancer and immune cells to identify how well a woman’s body is fighting a tumor. Here's what you should know.

To help police pinpoint hotspots of crime in a city, criminologists devised statistical software. Scientists have used similar software to find and evaluate other dangers — in women’s breasts.  

Developed at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London, the software finds clusters of immune cells around breast cancer cells. The more clusters a woman has, the more intense the immune response, which may indicate that her immune system is keeping the cancer under control. Clusters are more telling than simply the number of immune cells a woman with breast cancer might have.  

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“Our research is aiming to develop completely new ways of telling apart more and less aggressive cancers, based on how successful the immune system is in keeping tumors in check,” said Yinyin Yuan, PhD, who heads computational pathology and integrative genomics at ICR. “The test is the first objective method of measuring the strength of a patient’s immune response to her tumor.”

He suggested that pathologists would continue to look at tumor samples under a microscope, but the computerized analysis would add more information to help them decide on treatment.  

The researchers used this new approach to analyze tumor samples from 245 women with estrogen receptor negative (ER negative) breast cancer. Estrogen positive breast cancer, which is more common, can often be treated successfully with estrogen blockers, as the hormone estrogen fuels the cancer. These drugs, however, aren’t effective for ER negative breast cancer, making it difficult to treat.  

The research showed that women who had more hotspots (clusters) lived an average of 91 months before their cancer spread, compared with just 64 months for those with a low number of clusters. That suggests that the hotspot test could reveal which women might need more intensive treatment.

As Paul Workman, ICR’s chief executive, noted, “the interaction between the immune system and cancer is extraordinarily complex, and something we are only just beginning to understand.”

But the new test could help doctors tailor treatment.  

There is other hopeful news for women with difficult-to-treat ER negative breast cancer The Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug called Olaparib to treat high-risk early cancers. Data from a phase 3 clinical trial of 1,836 patients demonstrated that Olaparib reduced the risk of death by 32 percent, compared to a placebo.

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