Breast cancer screening at your fingertips?

A breast cancer diagnosis may just be right at our fingertips, literally.

A proof-of-concept study from the UK has shown the potential of a pioneering screening method that could rapidly and noninvasively identify molecular signatures of breast cancer – from a simple fingertip smear.

“[Our] study is at the interface of forensic science and clinical diagnostics and shows that fingerprints are valuable [in diagnosing] pathologies,” said study author Professor Simona Francese from the Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK, in a press release. [www.shu.ac.uk/news/all-articles/latest-news/sheffield-hallam-fingerprints-breast-cancer-detection, accessed April 26, 2023]

“We have discovered that sweat contains important biomolecules that can be indicators of some pathologies,” Francese shared in an interview. [www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH8tTpKPnQA, accessed April 29, 2023]. Sweat is a biological matrix containing excreted endogenous and semi-endogenous substances, and possible contaminants through direct skin contact or passive diffusion from the environment. [Analyst 2013;138:4215-4228; Curr Med Chem 2013;20:545-561; Clin Chem 2005;51:2085-2094]

A fingertip smear might contain enough proteins to indicate a benign pathology or a malignant breast neoplasm – be it in the metastatic or even in the early stages, as these cancer stages display different protein profiles, Francese noted.

Francese and her team combined bottom-up proteomics with Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Mass Spectrometry (MALDI MS) detection. Women with benign disease (breast pain, fibrocystic change, fibroadenoma, etc; n=5) or early (n=5) or metastatic breast cancer (n=5) were recruited from the Doncaster Royal Infirmary’s Jasmine Breast Unit. Fingertip smears were obtained from each of the 10 digits of each patient either at diagnosis or during active cancer treatment. [Sci Rep 2023;13:1868]

The highest performing predictive method – a three-class Multilayer Perceptron neural network – generated an accuracy score of 97.8 percent when categorizing unseen MALDI MS spectra as either benign, early, or metastatic cancer.

Huge implications in practice

“The accuracy is high,” stressed Francese, who called for larger follow-up studies to corroborate their findings. Given the chance, the implications for patients and the healthcare sector are huge, she underscored.

If validated, this method could hold water in a field where the conventional ‘gold standard’ screening methods (ie, mammography, biopsy) are limited by patient concerns such as radiation exposure, invasiveness, pain, and discomfort. Cultural inappropriateness may also be an issue given the required breast exposure to carry out such procedures.

“[A] painless, quick, and noninvasive method to screen for breast cancer collecting the sample in the comfort of the home is highly desirable,” stressed Francese. “[It] would reduce rates of misdiagnosis and improve early diagnosis and cure rates. The pain-free nature of the test would likely increase screening and survival rates … It also eliminates the risk of unnecessary radiation exposure,” the researchers noted in their published report.

In a nutshell, a simple swipe of a fingertip on a test surface might equate to freedom from the distress that conventional breast cancer screening methods entails. It could also offer some breathing space in a loaded healthcare system, allowing them to save up on resources.

Promising results

Also commenting in the press release was study co-author Professor Lynda Wyld from the University of Sheffield, UK. “This novel technique is still at an early stage in its development, but the results are very promising. We plan to undertake some more research to confirm these findings on a large group of women.”

“[I]f the findings are confirmed, the technique holds great potential both for the screening and diagnosis of breast cancer, [and] for monitoring how well treatments such as chemotherapy are working,” Wyld added.

“We do have very solid statistics … These are exciting findings and, given the potential impact, we must pursue validation for a future rollout,” said Francese.