How we classify cancer and spot it in its earliest stages could need an urgent rethink: researchers have found that even some healthy women carry cells with the key hallmarks of breast cancer.
These cells are known as aneuploid cells, and have an abnormal number of chromosomes. They’re common in invasive breast cancer, and it’s thought the chromosome imbalance enables cancer to spread and evade the body’s immune defenses.
Now it appears aneuploid cells might also be present even when there’s no cancer in sight. The researchers, from the University of Texas and the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, found them in breast tissue samples from 49 healthy women.
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