International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics

A new study has revealed a link between metastatic breast cancer and the number of circulating tumour cells that patients have in their blood.

This link can determine the survival rates of the breast cancer sufferer.

The research could help provide sufferers with more personalised therapy to combat the disease, scientists from MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, US, said.

Circulating tumour cells, which are the cancerous cells found in patients' bloodstream are detected in around 50 to 80 per cent of metastatic breast cancer sufferers.

Using an artificial neural network, researchers looked at the number of circulating cells and how this related to survival rates for cancer patients.

"There was a linear relationship between the number of circulating tumour cells and the risk of death in patients with metastatic breast cancer," said Dr Antonio Giordano from the MD cancer centre.

"Most importantly, the risk of death after one year for patients with 40 circulating tumour cells in 7.5ml of blood was about twice that for patients with none."

It was recently reported that a new simple genetic test, produced by US researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, could be used to help classify breast cancer into different sub-types.

Posted by Paul Robertson