Blood marker could predict breast cancer patient response to chemotherapy

Scientists from the University of Southampton have shed new light on which patients may not respond well to chemotherapy when being treated for breast cancer.

The study, published in the journal Breast Cancer Research , used a unique blood analysis method, developed by Dr Spiros Garbis and his associates, to show that the novel surrogate marker resistin expression, is elevated when responding to anthracycline-based chemotherapy in early onset breast cancer patients.

The increased resistin expression was also found to correlate with the cancer spreading and early death, regardless of the patient’s BMI, whether they carry the BRCA 1 or 2 gene, or the type of breast cancer they have.

Additionally, the elevated resistin expression was also linked with increased sugar metabolism along with key immunomodulatory traits.

Dr Garbis said: “Breast cancer survival is improving and almost doubled in the last 40 years in the UK.  Our findings suggest that if you monitor resistant expression levels in the blood, you could be able to predict who would have a poor response to chemotherapy. This would allow clinicians to consider other forms of treatment that may have a better outcome and improve survival rates even further.”