Using ctDNA found with liquid biopsy to understand recurrence risk in hormone receptor-positive breast cancer: Dana-Farber's Marla Lipsyc-Sharf MD, details research presented at #ASCO22 and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Most patients that are treated for early stage hormone receptor positive breast cancer fortunately never experienced recurrence. But most recurrences that do happen in this population are considered to be late recurrences, meaning they happen more than five years after initial diagnosis. So in the chirp study we asked whether a blood test called a liquid biopsy could find circulating tumor DNA or C. T. D. N. A. In patients with hormone receptor positive breast cancers diagnosed more than five years prior and if so if this was associated with risk of patients developing late recurrences. So we studied 83 patients with higher risk stage two or three hormone receptor positive breast cancer that provided tumor tissue from their initial breast cancer surgeries. That was then sequenced and used to create personalized liquid biopsy tests for each patient, Patients had liquid biopsy performed on blood tests every 6-12 months to determine the presence or absence of CT DNA. So overall we found that most patients tested negative for C. T. D. N. A. But for the patients that tested positive for C. T. D. N. A. This was associated with risk of breast cancer recurrence importantly the blood tests used in this study or research tests and are not quite ready to be used routinely in patient care. But this research is an important step towards future studies which will test whether changing treatment based on liquid biopsy tests could improve the care of future patients with hormone receptor positive breast cancer
