How a St. Paul lab is changing breast cancer mammogram screening
ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - For women at high risk for breast cancer, a mammogram alone may not be enough — and a St. Paul company is working to give them peace of mind.
Catching what mammograms can miss
What we know:
Dense breast tissue is a known risk factor for breast cancer, but it also makes mammograms harder to read. That's because dense tissue and tumors can look nearly identical on a scan.
"It's like trying to spot a snowball in a snowstorm," said Dr. Jayant Parthasarathy, Astrin Biosciences CEO, told FOX 9.
According to the CDC, about half of women over the age of 40 have dense breast tissue, leaving many unsure whether a mammogram alone is enough to monitor for cancer. That uncertainty is exactly what the company's Certitude blood test is designed to address.
What Certitude does
Dig deeper:
Certitude was built to do two things, according to Parthasarathy.
"It has to pick up the earliest signs of cancer," he said. "And second, is to provide the reassurance that if it doesn't find anything, there's nothing lurking behind."
The test is now available in 48 states. Astrin's lab in St. Paul needs only a small amount of blood to sort through about 7,000 specific proteins out of the roughly 10 billion protein copies in a sample.
From there, the sample goes to a mass spectrometer that takes about 20 minutes to generate data, which artificial intelligence then analyzes to flag any proteins of interest.
How proteins tell the story
Big picture view:
Proteins constantly send signals throughout the body — whether supporting blood vessel structure or fighting off infection and disease.
"A lot of these messages are benign, you know, ‘how is your day?’ type of thing," said Dr. Justin Drake, Astrin Biosciences Chief Science Officer. "But once in a while, you'll pick up these faint signals that may give you clues as to something lurking in the background."
Astrin's peer-reviewed studies show Certitude is more than 90% accurate when it identifies cancer and delivers false negatives less than 1% of the time.
What it means for high-risk patients
Why you should care:
Megan Rech has both dense breast tissue and a family history of breast cancer — two factors that put her at higher risk. Her screening routine already includes more frequent mammograms, but the worry doesn't go away.
"There's always that thought in the back of my mind of like is there something that's not being detected, is there something there that's going to show up in between one of these screenings," said Rech.
For her, Certitude offers something beyond a test result.
"Having the ability to have an additional layer of screening and confidence that there's nothing there is incredible," Rech said.
What's next:
Astrin Biosciences is not stopping at breast cancer.
According to the company, a similar blood test for prostate cancer could be next.
The Source: FOX 9's Corin Hoggard contributed to this report from St. Paul.