GUERNSEY women could be responsible for future early detection of breast cancer. Using 30,000 blood samples collected in the island between 1964 and 1990, geneticist Paul Townsend and his team at the University of Southampton have discovered breast cancer biomarkers which could allow doctors to identify the disease before it develops.

The collection includes samples from 1,000 women who have since been diagnosed with the condition.

Dr Townsend has identified markers present in the women who had developed cancer and absent in those who did not.

He said that a blood test could be developed that detected cancer before symptoms showed.

‘The collection is so powerful because nobody in the world has a collection of samples like this.

‘It really helps clear what I call the muddy waters,’ he added.

‘What makes this an excellent sample is that the population of Guernsey is very tight and we have samples of women who at the time were healthy, but who have since developed illnesses – the main one being cancer,’ he said.

Dr Townsend added that at the moment tests were often used only when patients had become ill.

‘What we can do is look back in time at the samples that were taken from these women and see if there is anything slightly different about them that was a predisposition to the illness they have developed.’

He said the research, now in its first year, was going excellently.

Glyn Allen, the secretary of Hope For Guernsey, the charity that raises money to help fund the research, said that the news of the breakthrough was fantastic.

‘The positive thing is that Paul and his team have identified a difference in the blood samples of women who have had breast cancer and those who have not.’

He said one of the next steps would be to identify exactly which biomarkers indicated that a person had a predisposition to cancer.