A scan after just two rounds of treatment can show whether breast cancer therapy is working

For people with HER2-positive breast cancer — about a fifth to a quarter of cases — treatment often starts with therapy to shrink the tumour before surgery, but doctors have had few reliable ways to know early whether it is working. Researchers at the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University in China followed 44 patients with a special PET/CT scan that lights up the HER2 protein, taking pictures before treatment, after the second round and before surgery. When the scan's signal in the main tumour fell by at least 61% after just two rounds, 85% of those patients had no cancer left at surgery, compared with 38% when the signal fell by less. The team, reporting in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, is careful that this was a small, single-hospital study — but if larger studies confirm it, doctors could spot a treatment that is not working months sooner and change course while there is still time.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation