A Promising New Early Biomarker for Breast Cancer

Zinc has been identified as a possible early biomarker for breast cancer, which may provide a novel diagnostic blood test for diagnosing the disease. 

Using high precision isotopic analysis, a technique usually reserved for the field of earth sciences, a team led by Oxford University scientists, in collaboration with Imperial College London and the Natural History Museum, has shown a significant difference in the isotopic composition of zinc between samples from volunteers with breast cancer and a healthy control group.

The body only contains a few grams of zinc but it is an essential element for maintaining health in humans – zinc deficiency can lead to many diverse symptoms including altered cognition and an increase in infection. Zinc is important in many processes throughout the body, for example gene expression and synaptic plasticity; cancer changes the way a cell processes zinc.

In this study, techniques used by researchers that are 100 times more sensitive than any currently used clinically were able to detect these changes in the processing of zinc. This is shown by differences in its isotopic composition in breast cancer tissue compared with samples from healthy volunteers. Samples of blood and serum were analysed from ten volunteers (five healthy and five who had breast cancer) and a range of samples of breast tissue from breast cancer patients and controls were also tested.

Dr Fiona Larner of the Oxford University Earth Sciences Department, who led the research, said that by understanding how different cancers alter various trace metals within the body, it could “enable us to develop both new diagnostic tools and new treatments that could lead to a ‘two-pronged’ attack on many cancers.” 

She added that the discovery possibly signifies ‘a whole new approach’ to diagnosing and treating the disease.