New Breast Cancer Test Links Immune ‘Hotspots’ to Better Survival
Scientists have developed a new test that predicts the survival chances of women with breast cancer by analyzing images of “hotspots” where there has been a fierce immune reaction to a tumor. Using statistical software previously used in criminology studies of crime hotspots, researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research in London tracked the extent to which the immune system was honing in on and attacking breast cancer cells. The test, described by Nawaz et al in Modern Pathology, could assess whether a woman’s immune system is holding a cancer at bay—and pick out those who will need intensive treatment to combat their more aggressive disease.
Study Details
In the study, researchers analyzed tumor samples from 245 women with estrogen receptor–negative breast cancer. Computerized imaging of tumor samples and statistical analysis were used to measure the number of immune cell “hotspots.” Researchers found that images of hotspots where immune cells were spatially clustered together around breast cancer cells provided a better measure of immune response than simply the numbers of immune cells within a tumor.
Patients were split into two groups based on the numbers of immune hotspots spots within their tumors. Women whose cancers had a high number of hotspots lived an average of 91 months before their cancer spread, compared with just 64 months for those with a low number of hotspots.
The test is the first objective method of measuring the strength of a patient's immune response to their tumor. Its automated analysis could complement existing methods, such as the examination of tumor samples under a microscope, to gain a sense of whether there is a strong immune response.
Research May Lead to More Tailored Treatments
Yinyin Yuan, BSc, MSc, PhD, Team Leader in Computational Pathology and Integrative Genomics at The Institute of Cancer Research, said, “Our research is aiming to develop completely new ways of telling apart more and less aggressive cancers, based on how successful the immune system is in keeping tumors in check. We have shown that to measure the strength of an immune response to a cancer, we need to assess not just how many immune cells there are, but whether these are clustered together into cancer-busting hotspots. By analyzing the complex ways in which the immune system interacts with cancer cells, we can split women with breast cancer into two groups, who might need different types of treatment.”
Paul Workman, FMedSci, Chief Executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said, “This study has found an ingenious way to generate and understand data from images of biopsy samples, which are already taken from patients but not analyzed in a mathematical way. The interaction between the immune system and cancer is extraordinarily complex, and something we are only just beginning to understand. But just as there are high hopes for immunotherapy as a future cancer treatment, we also believe that this new way of measuring immune reaction could be used to tailor treatment more effectively to individual patients.”
Dr. Yuan is the corresponding author of the Modern Pathology article.
This study was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Wellcome Trust, and The Institute of Cancer Research.
The content in this post has not been reviewed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Inc. (ASCO®) and does not necessarily reflect the ideas and opinions of ASCO®.
