A team of researchers mapping a molecular atlas for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) has made a major advance toward distinguishing whether the early pre-cancers in the breast will develop into invasive cancers or remain stable. Analyzing samples from patients who had undergone surgery to remove areas of DCIS, the team identified 812 genes associated with cancer progression. Using this gene classifier, they were then able to predict the risk of cancer cells recurring or progressing.
The study, which published this week in the journal Cancer Cell, was led by E. Shelley Hwang, M.D.
, of the Duke Cancer Institute, and Rob West, M.D., Ph.
D., of the Stanford University Medical Center. Their work is part of the Human Tumor Atlas Network under the Moonshot Initiative funded by the National Cancer Institute.
There has been a long-standing debate over whether DCIS is cancer or a high-risk condition. In the absence of a way to make that determination, we currently treat everyone with surgery, radiation, or both." Shelley Hwang, M.
D., Duke Cancer Institute "DCIS is diagnosed in more than 50,000 women a year, and about a third of those women have a mastectomy, so we are increasingly concerned that we might be overtreating many women," Hwang said. "We need to understand the biology of DCIS better, and that's what our research has been designed to do.
" Hwang, West and colleagues analyzed 774 DCIS samples from 542 patients who were a median of 7.4 years post-treatment. They identified 812 gen.