A study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute by researchers from the University of California, San Francisco identifies what could be indicators as to whether a patient’s ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS, a non-invasive breast cancer lesion) will progress to invasive breast cancer.
“DCIS is known as ‘stage zero’ breast cancer, and in fact many have questioned whether it should be called ‘cancer’ at all,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “The real question is, what should we do about it? The challenge is finding out which DCIS lesions will progress to become a threat and which ones are harmless. If these researchers have discovered some criteria for allowing use for more precisely distinguishing between dangerous lesions that will progress and those that won’t, that would be a real breakthrough.”
“They claim to have found three different proteins – ‘biomarkers’ – somewhat predictive of subsequent development of invasive breast cancer,” explains ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “Patients with the lowest risk – those who had no palpable lump nor any of these biomarkers – had a much lower risk of developing invasive cancer than general patients with DCIS, whereas the group that expressed all of the biomarkers had a relatively high risk. This is not a huge study, but it’s big enough to warrant attention.”