Breakthrough find for breast cancer

By SIMON COLLINS, science reporter

An Auckland scientist has developed a revolutionary form of breast screening that may detect cancer several years earlier than present x-ray techniques.

The new radar-based system can spot tumours as small as 1mm in diameter, a quarter of the size of the smallest tumours that are up to nine or 10 years old by the time they can be found by existing x-ray mammograms and ultrasounds.

Auckland breast surgeon John Harman, who is seeking ethical committee approval for a stage one clinical trial of the technique, said it could be the biggest advance in breast screening in 30 years.

"There is still a long way to go, but this could be an incredible breakthrough in medical technology."

But it is tinged with tragedy for the inventor, Industrial Research scientist Dr Ray Simpkin, 43.

Six months ago his wife died from a rare lung condition that was made worse by giving birth to the couple's first child a month before.

Dr Simpkin is now caring for their seven-month-old son.

The couple immigrated to New Zealand in 2001 from Britain, where Dr Simpkin worked in military-oriented radar imaging for British Aerospace for 19 years.

At Industrial Research (IRL) in Parnell, he applied his radar knowledge first to developing a wood quality test for logs, aimed at telling processors how to carve the log up in the best way to avoid knots.

But he had been thinking for some time that radar could also be used for breast screening, and persuaded IRL to give him a year to work on it.

"It's a nice spinoff from military into medical uses," he said.

He found that a malignant tumour interacts with a radar wave about five times more strongly than normal tissue, so it shows up starkly on a three-dimensional radar image.

Despite this, previous researchers had not been able to develop a successful radar test because skin usually weakens a radar wave.

Dr Simpkin's breakthrough was finding a way to override this weakening effect, allowing the radar to "see" clearly under the skin for the first time.

He would not describe the technique because he is seeking a patent, but said it was "computational".

"It's what you do with the data."

The radar device did not require any physical contact with the breast, unlike x-ray mammography where the breast has to be clamped in a machine.

Radar did no damage to the patients, as the waves were much longer than x-rays.

Short-wave x-rays, in contrast, could be harmful if women had them done repeatedly.

"That's why, when you get an x-ray at the dentist's, the dentist takes 10 paces back or goes and stands in another room because they are potentially exposed to the x-rays," Dr Simpkin said.

The radar device also operated on very low power - about one-thousandth of the power of a mobile phone.

IRL chief executive Nigel Kirkpatrick said the potential worldwide market for the technology was around $500 million a year.

"It's proven in the lab that it's far more accurate [than existing breast screening]. We know it works," he said.

"Our job now is to prove it on a commercial basis."

Mr Harman said he was seeking approval for a stage one trial of the device with 10 to 15 women from his St Marks Women's Health Clinic in Remuera who were already diagnosed with breast cancer.

He was confident there would be no difficulty finding volunteers because the women would be at no risk in the radar trial.

"We would hope that we would have the trial under way and reported back within the next three to six months," he said.

"Phase 2 will be on 100 patients and we will scan using radar, mammograms and ultrasound and compare the results."

Dr Simpkin said this larger trial might be done in Europe as well as in Auckland in order to seek regulatory approval to sell the radar device in Europe.

The Government gave IRL an extra $3 million of capital in December to finance the commercialisation of the new system and other new IRL products, including a cancer drug being trialled with the Albert Einstein Medical College in New York.

Health Minister Annette King announced last month that free breast screening would be extended from the 50 to 64 age group to a wider group of women aged between 45 and 70.

THE FIGURES

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among New Zealand women, killing 640 a year. New Zealand has the world's second-highest rate of breast cancer.