Blood biomarkers for inflammatory breast cancer ^{CEFR B2}

Scientists have identified blood-based biomarkers that can reliably distinguish inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) from other breast cancer subtypes, a finding published in Science Advances. The study used Thermostable Group II Intron Reverse Transcriptase (TGIRT) sequencing, a method developed by Alan Lambowitz’s team at The University of Texas at Austin. TGIRT uses a more robust enzyme that tolerates extreme conditions and captures complex, fragmented RNAs that standard methods often miss.

Clinical samples and medical insights were provided by Savitri Krishnamurthy at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Naoto Ueno, then a professor at the Morgan Welch Inflammatory Breast Cancer Program and Clinic at UT MD Anderson and now director of the University of Hawai’i Cancer Center. The researchers also developed analytic methods to focus on protein-coding genes specific to IBC tumors.

Key findings include higher levels of noncoding RNAs and increased white blood cell counts in IBC patient blood compared with healthy or non-IBC patients. In plasma, IBC samples contained many intron RNA fragments, while healthy plasma mostly carried mRNA fragments. This pattern points to immune activation and imbalances in RNA splicing that reduce mRNA production. Overall, the team proposed several potential blood-based biomarkers that could improve diagnosis, monitoring and the development of new therapies. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, The Welch Foundation, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the UT MD Anderson Morgan Welch Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Program and Clinic, and the State of Texas Rare and Aggressive Breast Cancer Research Program; a full list of authors and disclosures is available with the paper in Science Advances.