breast cancer

Adding ultrasound exams to annual breast cancer screening can detect more cancers in women who have dense breasts and are at a higher risk of breast cancer, according to a three-year, multi-center trial appearing this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But the scans carry risks that may outweigh their benefits.

Breast cancer expert Matthew Ellis, MD, PhD, works with the Genome Institute at Washington University to sequence entire breast cancer genomes — the billions of “letters” making up a person’s DNA. The goal is to unlock the mysteries of breast cancer and tailor treatments to individual patients.

A new study shows that adolescent girls with a family history of breast disease – either cancer or the benign lesions that can become cancer – have a higher risk of developing benign breast disease as young women than other girls. And unlike girls without a family history, this already elevated risk rises with increasing alcohol consumption.

Julie Margenthaler’s practice centers on treating young women with breast cancer, who are more likely to be African-American and to have aggressive disease. “These women are empowered, and they bring a great energy to my practice,” Margenthaler, MD, says. “Yes, there are times when they are frightened — you have to face your mortality when you get a breast cancer diagnosis — but they also have an incredible optimism.”

Donations collected by check boxes on state income tax forms, fees from license plates and revenue from state lottery tickets have raised millions for breast cancer research and prevention programs, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found.

A newly established fund to support innovative cancer research at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center has awarded its first two $900,000 grants to high-tech efforts to undermine cancer cells’ ability to resist treatment. The awards will help scientists use genetic data to find new ways to attack treatment-resistant breast cancer and precisely target treatments for various kinds of cancer cells based on their responses to radiation therapy.

Health-care specialists, including Sarah J. Gehlert, PhD, at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, are working to improve breast cancer care for African-American women living in North St. Louis City, where death rates from breast cancer are disproportionately high.

In the first large trial of its kind in the United States, researchers have shown that estrogen-lowering drugs can shrink tumors and reduce mastectomy rates for patients with stage 2 or 3 breast cancer.

In an editorial in the April 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, co-author Graham Colditz, MD, PhD, cautions against estrogen-only hormone therapy in women who have had a hysterectomy because of longstanding evidence that it raises the risk of breast cancer.

In the single largest cancer genomics investigation reported to date, scientists have sequenced the whole genomes of tumors from 50 breast cancer patients and compared them to the matched DNA of the same patients’ healthy cells. They uncovered incredible complexity in the cancer genomes, but also got a glimpse of new routes toward personalized medicine.