Abstract
Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women, with alarming mortalities. Neoadjuvant treatments employ chemotherapy to shrink tumours to a well-defined size for a better surgical outcome. The current means of assessing effectiveness of chemotherapy management are imprecise. We previously showed that breast cancer patients have higher serum circulating cell-free DNA concentrations. cfDNA is degraded cellular DNA fragments released into the bloodstream. We further report on the utility of cfDNA in assessing the response to chemotherapy and its potential as a monitoring biomarker. A total of 32 newly diagnosed and treatment-naive female breast cancer patients and 32 healthy females as controls were included. Anthropometric, demographic and clinicopathological information of participants were recorded. Each participant donated 5 mL of venous blood from which sera were separated. Blood sampling was carried out before the commencement of chemotherapy (timepoint 1) and after the third cycle of chemotherapy (timepoint 2). qPCR was performed on the sera to quantify ALU 115 and 247 levels, and DNA integrity (ALU247/ALU115) was determined. ALU 115 and 247 levels were elevated in cancer patients but were significantly decreased after the third cycle of chemotherapy (T2) compared to T1. DNA integrity increased after the third cycle. Serum cfDNA may provide a relatively inexpensive and minimally invasive procedure to evaluate the response to chemotherapy in breast cancer.
Highlights
Cancer incidence and mortality is on the ascendancy and has become a major public health concern
The present study further explored the utility of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in assessing the response to chemotherapy and its potential as a monitoring biomarker, as has been pioneered in rectal cancers [33]
The menarche index was statistically higher in the healthy individuals as compared to the breast cancer patients, with mean ± SD of 16.38 ± 1.31 and 12.63 ± 2.20, respectively (p < 0.0001)
Summary
Cancer incidence and mortality is on the ascendancy and has become a major public health concern. Cancer incidence and mortality have seen a steady rise on the African continent, with breast cancer among the leading causes of cancer deaths in females [2]. Breast cancer is the world’s most common cancer in women [4], a trend witnessed in Ghana, accompanied by high mortality rate [5,6]. In Ghana and most African countries, the disease is diagnosed late and associated with high mortality rates and is currently the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women in Ghana [4]. Despite recent advances in the care and management of the disease, morbidity and mortality rates in Ghana are still unacceptably high [7,8]
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