October 5, 2015
GaTech Biomedical engineers have developed a model that could help guide choices for breast cancer therapies
By Georgia Institute of Technology
Biomedical engineers have demonstrated a proof-of-principle technique that could give women and their oncologists more personalized information to help them choose options for treating breast cancer.
Thanks to diagnostic tests, clinicians and patients can already know the type of breast cancer they're up against, but one big question remains: How likely is it that the cancer will invade other parts of the body? Answering that question could help guide the choice of treatment options, from aggressive and difficult therapies to more conservative ones.
By studying chemical signals from specific cells that are involved in helping cancer invade other tissues in each woman's body, researchers have developed a predictive model that could provide an invasiveness index for each patient.
"We want women to have more information to make a personal decision beyond the averages calculated for an entire population," said Manu Platt, an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "We are using our systems biology tools and predictive medicine approaches to look at potential markers we could use to help us understand the risk each woman has. This would provide information for a more educated discussion of treatment options."
The research, sponsored with funds from the Georgia Research Alliance and the Giglio family donation to the Department of Biomedical Engineering, was reported September 9 in the journal Scientific Reports. Beyond breast cancer, the technique could offer similar decision-making assistance for men with prostate cancer, where treatment also requires making difficult choices about the risk of metastasis.
