At a recent major breast cancer conference medical oncologist Marleen Kok showed the painting The Unseen (see image). Why? The type of breast cancer her team just completed a study on is also, unfortunately, rather invisible. This lobular breast cancer is hard to see on scans and clinical trials specifically for these patients were non-existent. Until now, that is. Marleen Kok and her colleagues have completed their GELATO study and are publishing the results in the leading journal Nature Cancer.
Need for research
It was evident from the start that there was a great need for such a study: patients and doctors from all over the country knocked on the researchers' door. Every year, 15,000 people in the Netherlands get breast cancer, 1 in 7 of whom have the lobular form. Doctors can diagnose this in a tissue slice under the microscope (see image below).
"For choosing treatments, doctors mainly consider certain molecules that are present on the cancer cells’ surface," says Kok. "Such as hormone receptors and HER2 molecules. In reality, the lobular shape can also be crucial for the behavior of the disease and the success rate of treatments."
