A new study show that scientists develop a new test which can predict the survival chances of women with breast cancer by analysing images of ‘hotspots’ where there has been a fierce immune reaction to a tumour. The finding is published in the journal Modern Pathology.

Investigators analysed tumor samples from 245 woman with a type of breast cancer called oestrogen receptor negative, via using statistical software to track the extent to which the immune system was homing in and attacking breast cancer cells.

They 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 tumour.

The patients were split into two groups based on the numbers of immune hotspots spots within their tumours. And researchers found that women whose cancers had a high number of spots lived an average of 91 months before their cancer spread, compared with just 64 months for those with a low number of spots.

Promise of Diagnostic Test

The test, described in the paper, become the first objective method of measuring the strength of a patient’s immune response to their tumour. Its automated analysis could complement existing methods where pathologists examine tumour samples under the microscope to gain a sense of whether there is a strong immune response.

The research aims to develop completely new ways of distinguishing more and less aggressive cancers, based on how successful the immune system is in keeping tumours in check. It is required to assess how many immune cells there are, but whether these are clustered together into cancer-busting hotspots, therefore mesuring the strength of an immune response to a cancer.

By analysing the complex ways in which the immune system interacts with cancer cells, investigators can split women with breast cancer into two groups, who might need different types of treatment, such as immunotherapy. The study has found an ingenious approach to generate and understand data from images of biopsy samples, which are already taken from patients but not analysed in a mathematical way.

Reference:

Beyond immune density: critical role of spatial heterogeneity in estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. Modern Pathology, 2015; DOI: 10.1038/modpathol.2015.37