New breast cancer hope as AI breakthrough could spare THOUSANDS of women from chemotherapy 

Thousands of women with breast cancer can be spared unnecessary chemotherapy thanks to a new technique with artificial intelligence.

Scientists believe the new method could save the NHS millions of pounds annually, as it provides a faster and cheaper way to determine whether the disease is likely to return after surgery.

At this time, when a woman has a breast lump removed, thin slices of tumor are sometimes sent to California for analysis to gauge how aggressive the cancer is.

The result is a ‘score’ for how likely it is that a woman’s cancer will return within ten years. If she has a high risk score, her oncologist will recommend that she receive chemotherapy to kill the remaining cancer cells.

But sending the samples abroad is expensive for the NHS and slow for the women, who spend weeks stressfully waiting for the results.

In addition, a decision is often made without sending a sample. In such cases, the oncologist will often exercise caution and recommend drug treatment.

While chemotherapy can be life-saving, it can cause unpleasant side effects, including nausea, fatigue, and hair loss, and can damage long-term heart health.

The new method, called Digistain, aims to give more women a thorough assessment of whether they need chemotherapy by providing a faster, cheaper service to the NHS.

Dr Hemmel Amrania, the director, said: ‘We estimate that about 30 per cent of patients with hormone positive early breast cancer who receive unnecessary chemotherapy can safely discontinue it thanks to this method.’

Scientists believe the new method could save the NHS millions of pounds annually as it provides a faster and cheaper way to determine if the disease is likely to return after surgery

That could mean up to 4,000 women a year avoiding unnecessary chemotherapy, he added.

Each time a woman undergoes chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer, it alone costs about £1,000 in drug costs, according to a 2020 study.

This means the new test could generate annual savings of £4 million, excluding labour.

The NHS’s total chemotherapy budget is around £1.5 billion.

In addition, said Dr. Amrania said the new test was much cheaper than the £2,000 to £4,000 cost of sending a sample to the United States for analysis.

The method, based on research at Imperial College London, automates the process of assessing how aggressive cancers are by scanning microscopically thin biopsy samples mounted on slides, using a machine no larger than a desktop printer.

The new method, called Digistain, aims to give more women a thorough assessment of whether they need chemotherapy by providing a faster, cheaper service to the NHS

Just as an office scanner digitizes a photo and records the information as thousands of pixels, the Digistain machine turns the biopsy slice into a digital file.

But instead of capturing the color and intensity of spots on the digital photo, it captures patterns that show the presence of proteins associated with aggressive cancers.

By comparing thousands of digitized photos, researchers have developed a computer program that “learns” which images indicate aggressive cancers.

A Midlands NHS hospital trust will soon be using Digistain for breast cancer, said Dr. Amrania, while the method is also being rolled out in several hospitals in the US and India.