A Dublin university claims to have discovered a new weapon against breast cancer.
Scientists say a special blood test, which could be carried out in a doctor's surgery, can detect signs of the potentially deadly condition in its early stage, ruling out the need for invasive biopsies.
DCU neuroscientist Brendan O'Connor
The discovery, made accidentally during research by Dublin City University (DCU), comes amid continued controversy over the country's breast cancer services.
Sera Scientific, a company linked to DCU, has developed and patented the discovery as a new early-warning cancer screening blood test named SeraPro. The test, which takes around 15 minutes to carry out, can detect extremely low levels of a protein in the blood which is a marker for the early stage development of breast cancer.
Brendan O'Connor, the DCU neuroscientist who made the potentially breakthrough find, said the product had been tested in almost 100 women over the last year in co-operation with Breast Check Ireland. He branded the results very promising.
"I came across this blood test by accident like so many scientific discoveries," he said. "I am not a cancer scientist. I was tracing enzymes in the brain that also appeared in blood when I discovered this protein.
"When they kept turning up it was an annoyance to begin with, but when I found out the significance of this protein in early stage breast cancer, it became clear that the blood test could be a potential diagnostic assay for the disease."
Mr O'Connor said further tests were required to rule out the possibility that the protein found in the blood could indicate other forms of cancer.
A further 200 women are to be tested for further research before SeraPro can be distributed commercially.
The findings were today presented at DCU to EU Commissioner for Science and Research Janez Potocnik.