According to some official reports, U. S. researchers are looking for biomarkers that will allow routine breast biopsies to predict if cancer is likely to spread.

It has been reported that Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center and Georgetown University Hospital in Washington are seeking to avoid false negatives in which, despite the "sentinel" lymph node appearing clean of cancer cells, the cancer spreads.

Their pilot study has already identified several breast cancer molecular markers.

Researcher Luciane Cavalli says in a statement, "If we find markers that can be significantly associated with patients that develop axillaries metastasis, we can check for these markers at an early stage of the cancer management. That will give physicians a chance to treat what is otherwise an unseen metastasis."

Cavalli and colleagues compared breast cancer cells and sentinel lymph nodes removed from 15 patients whose cancer spread to the lymph nodes.

It was found by them that genes related to tumor growth that were either amplified or deleted in both samples. (With Inputs from Agencies)