Living near toxic sites linked to aggressive breast cancer
Reports and Proceedings
This month, we're turning our attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a time dedicated to increasing awareness, supporting early detection, and highlighting the ongoing research shaping the future of breast cancer treatment and prevention.
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 10-Oct-2025 14:11 ET (10-Oct-2025 18:11 GMT/UTC)
Women living close to federally designated Superfund sites are more likely to develop aggressive breast cancers — including the hard-to-treat triple-negative subtype — according to new studies from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
AMHERST, Mass. — A study led by University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers demonstrates that their nanoparticle-based vaccine can effectively prevent melanoma, pancreatic and triple-negative breast cancer in mice. Not only did up to 88% of the vaccinated mice remain tumor-free (depending on the cancer), but the vaccine reduced—and in some cases completely prevented—the cancer’s spread.
A new two-pronged approach for early breast cancer detection diagnosed malignant and benign tumors in 170 patients. During the clinical study, the system achieved a specificity of 75%. Comparatively, clinical ultrasonography performed on the same patient cohort had a specificity of only 22.5%. The new approach took only 12 seconds, significantly reducing the amount of time required for ultrasonography. Catching breast cancer early leads to better patient outcomes, but existing non-invasive diagnostic techniques have room for improvement. Ultrasonography, for example, cannot account for blood vasculature, which typically holds signatures of early-stage cancer, such as signs of hypoxia. Incorporating photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) can address this shortcoming, because the technology uses optical illumination and acoustics to reveal blood vessel characteristics. Now, Keer Huang and colleagues present a bimodal PACT-ultrasonic computed tomography system that characterizes the human breast’s blood flow and anatomy super quickly. The high-speed imaging visualizes small blood vessel structures up to 5 centimeters beneath the skin’s surface. In a clinical study, the approach achieved 75% diagnostic specificity – identifying tumors as benign or malignant – when used on 170 patients with 186 breast tumors. “There is currently no reliable noninvasive imaging modality widely accepted in clinical practice for closely monitoring breast cancer response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy,” Huang et al. write. “[This system] holds the potential to meet this critical need.”
Whole genome sequencing offered to breast cancer patients is likely to identify unique genetic features that could either guide immediate treatment or help match patients to clinical trials for over 15,000 women a year, say scientists at the University of Cambridge.