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New blood test could predict if breast cancer will return years before relapse
Researchers could be able to identify patients who go on to relapse by detecting very low levels of cancer found in the blood
A new type of blood test could predict the recurrence of breast cancer in high-risk patients, months or even years before they relapse, research has shown.
A team from The Institute of Cancer Research, London, used an ultra-sensitive liquid biopsy to detect the presence of tiny amounts of cancer DNA left in the body following treatment for early breast cancer.
The findings, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, involved analysing blood samples from the ChemoNEAR sample collection study for circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) that is released into the bloodstream by cancer cells.
The researchers were able to identify all patients from the study who later went on to relapse by detecting very low levels of cancer found in the blood, known as molecular residual disease.
By helping to spot the patients most likely to relapse, the ICR scientists hope the results will pave the way for a new strategy for treating recurrent breast cancer where treatment can be started much earlier, without waiting for incurable, advanced disease to develop and show up on a scan.
Although previous studies have shown that ctDNA blood tests can identify relapse long before it can be seen on a scan, most tests use a technique called whole exome sequencing (WES) as it focuses on the exons – the protein-coding regions of genes – which are directly related to diseases.
However, the approach in this study involves sequencing the entire genome, known as whole genome sequencing (WGS). This enabled researchers to identify up to 1,800 mutations, which is much more sensitive and includes a larger number of cancer-related changes that could occur in a patient’s DNA.
Blood samples from 78 patients with different types of early breast cancer were screened for ctDNA.
The samples were collected from the women at diagnosis before their therapy, after the second cycle of chemotherapy, following their surgery and every three months during follow-up for the first year. After that, samples were collected every six months for the next five years.
The results showed that detection of ctDNA at any point after surgery or during the follow up period was associated with a high risk of future relapse and poorer overall survival.
Molecular residual disease was detected in all 11 patients who relapsed. The median lead time to clinical relapse in this group of patients was 15 months, an increase of over three months, compared with current tests in all types of breast cancer. The longest lead time to clinical relapse was 41 months.
None of the 60 women in whom ctDNA remained undetected, relapsed throughout the follow-up period.
Author, Dr Isaac Garcia-Murillas, staff scientist in the Molecular Oncology Group at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: “Breast cancer cells can remain in the body after surgery and other treatments but there can be so few of these cells that they are undetectable on follow-up scans.
“These cells can cause breast cancer patients to relapse many years after their initial treatment. Ultra-sensitive blood tests could offer a better approach for the long-term monitoring of patients whose cancer is at high risk of returning.
“Most personalised liquid biopsies currently use whole exome sequencing to identify mutations. But this approach goes one step further and uses whole genome sequencing to identify up to 1,800 mutations in a patient’s tumour DNA that could identify recurrence of the patient’s cancer from a blood sample.
“A more sensitive test is very important for this group of early breast cancer patients as they tend to have a very low amount of cancer DNA in their blood.
“This proof-of-principle retrospective study lays the groundwork for better post-treatment monitoring and potentially life-extending treatment in patients.”
Professor Nicholas Turner, professor of molecular oncology at the ICR, and consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Testing a patient’s blood for ctDNA will allow clinicians to diagnose the return of cancer at the very earliest stage. However, further research and testing are needed before we can demonstrate whether detecting molecular residual disease could guide therapy in the future.
“The ongoing TRAK-ER trial at The Royal Marsden, for example, is using a different molecular test to identify circulating tumour DNA and predict relapse in ER positive breast cancer patients. This trial is looking at whether relapse in patients with residual disease could be prevented by altering their treatment.”
Professor Kristian Helin, chief executive of the ICR, said: “Breast cancer is much easier to treat before it spreads to other parts of the body, so it is vital to be able to detect signs of recurrence of the disease as early as possible to give people the best chance of survival.
“It is very exciting to see advances in technology that can detect cancer cells and DNA with greater sensitivity to pick up residual disease or detect the early signs of breast cancer recurrence while a cure is still possible.
“These approaches are having a transformative effect on cancer diagnosis. They will help us exploit our knowledge of cancer risk to develop new strategies for targeted screening and detection.”
Dr Simon Vincent, director of research, support and influencing at Breast Cancer Now, which part-funded this study, added: “Early detection is one of our greatest weapons against breast cancer and these initial findings, which suggests new tests could be able to detect signs of breast cancer recurrence over a year before symptoms emerge, are incredibly exciting.
“While this research is still in its early stages, catching breast cancer recurrence earlier means treatment is much more likely to destroy the cancer and stop it spreading to other parts of the body, at which point it becomes incurable.
“With around 11,000 people dying every year in the UK from secondary breast cancer, breakthroughs like these are urgently needed so that we can stop people losing their lives to this devastating disease.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched an AI tool in beta to help policymakers, experts and healthcare professionals access sexual and reproductive health information faster.
Called ChatHRP, the tool was created by WHO’s Human Reproduction Programme and draws only on verified research and guidance collected by HRP and WHO.
It uses natural language processing and retrieval-augmented generation to produce referenced content and cut the time spent searching through documents across different platforms and databases.
WHO said ChatHRP also has multilingual capabilities and low-bandwidth functionality to support use in a wide range of settings.
The beta-testing phase is aimed at a broad professional audience, including policymakers, healthcare workers, researchers and civil society groups.
WHO said the tool can help users quickly access up-to-date evidence, find sources for academic work and verify information on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Examples of questions it can answer include the latest violence against women data in Oceania for women aged 15 to 49, recommendations on managing diabetes during pregnancy, and whether PrEP and contraception can be used at the same time. PrEP is medicine used to reduce the risk of getting HIV.
WHO added that the system will be updated regularly as new HRP materials are published and includes a feedback loop so users can flag gaps in the information provided.
The launch comes amid wider concern about misinformation in sexual and reproductive health.
A 2025 scoping review found that misinformation in digital spaces is a systemic issue that can undermine human rights, reinforce discriminatory social norms and exclude marginalised voices.
The review also said misinformation can affect health systems by shaping provider knowledge and practice, disrupting service delivery and creating barriers to equitable care.
WHO said ChatHRP is intended to give users streamlined access to reliable information as a counter to “algorithms, opinions, or misinformation”.
Wellness
Women’s HealthX unveils Northwell Health, Corewell Health, Biogen & more to headline Chronic Disease stage
Women’s HealthX has announced its lineup of healthcare trailblazers speaking on Chronic Disease Management, alongside other specialisations including Fertility, Sexual Health, Maternity, Menopause and Cognitive Health, taking a holistic approach to women’s health.
It will bring together 750+ leaders across pharma, health systems, and innovation to address one of the most urgent and underexamined challenges in healthcare; the sex difference gap in data and evidence.
Since cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death among women globally, and autoimmune and neurological conditions affect women at significantly higher rates, Women’s HealthX will home in on chronic disease management with 17+ sessions spotlighting case studies and lessons learned.
The Chronic Disease Management Stage at Women’s HealthX responds directly to this gap, convening senior decision makers and innovators to explore how sex specific science, digital health, and new care models can reshape outcomes for women.
Attending pharma & healthcare organisations include:
- Tracy Sims, Executive Director, Cardiometabolic Health, Eli Lilly
- Adrian Kielhorn, Senior Director, Global Head HEOR Neurology, Alexion Pharmaceuticals
- Lauren Powell, Head of Health Equity and Clinical Innovation, Biogen
- Amy Kao, SVP, Head of Neuroscience and Immunology Research, EMD Serono
- Stella Vnook, Executive Chair and CEO, Kaida Biopharma
- Amanda Borsky, Director, Clinical Research, Northwell Health
- Lacey McIntosh, Division Chief, Oncologic and Molecular Imaging, UMass Memorial Medical Center
- Nicole Turck, Vice President Operations, Women’s Health, Corewell Health
- Mette Dyhrberg, CEO, Autoimmune Registry
- Lyn Agostinelli, Principal Consultant, Halloran Consulting Group
Sessions addressing the real gaps in women’s chronic care
The agenda features a series of high impact sessions tackling the structural and scientific gaps in women’s health:
- Improving outcomes in obesity through evidence based person centered care: Eli Lilly
- Tackling sex based health inequities by breaking down barriers and bias: Alexion Pharmaceuticals
- Close the health equity gap in women’s health by improving how autoimmune diseases are diagnosed, treated and managed: Autoimmune Registry
- How a GYN only care model is driving faster access to gynecological care: Corewell Health
- Transforming early detection in ovarian cancer: new pathways to accuracy, safety, and better outcomes: UMass Memorial Medical Center
Panel discussions include:
- Why chronic disease looks different in women and why health systems haven’t adapted: Biogen, Kaida Biopharma, EMD Serono
- How can we better engage with our customers: Northwell Health, Halloran Consulting Group
Health equity starts here. REGISTER YOUR PLACE
Why This Matters Now
Women’s HealthX positions chronic disease not just as a clinical challenge, but as a critical frontier for innovation, investment, and system redesign.
From AI powered monitoring and digital therapeutics to real world data and integrated care pathways, the stage highlights where meaningful progress is already being made and where the biggest opportunities lie.
For the FemTech ecosystem, this represents a pivotal moment: aligning technology, clinical insight, and commercial strategy to finally close the long standing data and care gaps in women’s health.
About Women’s HealthX
Women’s HealthX is where the transformation of women’s health begins at its true foundation: data, science, and evidence.
It’s the leading event dedicated to closing the sex difference data gap and accelerating breakthroughs through science driven, real world case studies.
Taking place on December 3 to 4, 2026 in Boston, USA, the exhibition will bring together more than 750 healthcare leaders, including clinicians, payers, employers, investors, and policymakers.
Seven different stages with 150+ expert speakers taking an holistic approach to women’s health. From fertility, maternity, sexual health, cognitive health, menopause and chronic disease, we address care at every stage of a woman’s life.
An AI atlas has mapped how reproductive organs age through menopause, with the ovaries, vagina and uterus changing on different timelines.
To better understand how this process affects health, researchers at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center developed what they describe as the first large-scale atlas of female reproductive system ageing, using artificial intelligence.
The team combined 1,112 tissue images from 659 samples, covering 304 women aged 20 to 70, with gene expression data from thousands of genes.
This allowed them to reconstruct how seven key reproductive organs, including the uterus, ovary, vagina, cervix, breast and fallopian tubes, age over time.
The study used the supercomputing power of MareNostrum 5 together with advanced image-recognition methods to process the data.
Using deep learning techniques, the researchers detected visible tissue changes as well as the underlying molecular processes linked to ageing in each organ.
The result was a detailed, organ-by-organ map of the reproductive system’s ageing process.
The researchers found that not all organs age in the same way or at the same speed. The ovaries and vagina showed a more gradual ageing process that begins even before menopause officially starts.
By contrast, the uterus appeared to undergo more sudden changes around the time of menopause.
Even within a single organ, different tissues aged at different rates. In the uterus, for example, the mucosa, its inner lining, and the muscular layer did not change in sync. These tissues also appeared to be particularly sensitive to the hormonal and biological shifts associated with menopause.
Marta Melé, leader of the transcriptomics and functional genomics group at BSC and director of the study, said: “Our results show that it acts as a turning point that profoundly reorganises other organs and tissues of the reproductive system, and allows us to identify the genes and molecular processes that could be behind these changes.”
Building on the finding that organs age according to different patterns, co-first author Laura Ventura said the research “paves the way for personalised medicine where treatments are tailored to a woman’s specific molecular profile and the specific tissues showing the most age-related distress.”
The study also identified molecular signals linked to reproductive ageing that can be detected in blood samples from more than 21,441 women.
These biomarkers could allow doctors to monitor the condition of reproductive organs in a non-invasive way, potentially helping to anticipate risks such as pelvic floor complications without the need for biopsies.
According to the researchers, this could lead to simpler and more accessible clinical tools for tracking women’s health over time.
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