Harmful effect of neoadjuvant chemotherapy monitoring by DSC on breast cancer patients’ blood plasma

Preoperative neoadjuvant chemotherapy is currently a common approach for treatment of breast cancer patients. These anticancer drugs are harmful, but essential in the fight against tumor cells. The purpose of this pilot study was to compare the thermal changes of blood plasma with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) method between neoadjuvant chemotherapy received and not received breast cancer patients. The study included 11 adult breast cancer women who were grouped according to TNM stage and perioperative treatments. Patients who had ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), as a local tumor without any metastases did not receive any neoadjuvant chemotherapy (n = 3). Patients with invasive lobular carcinoma with local metastases received neoadjuvant chemotherapy preoperatively (n = 8). Peripheral blood samples were collected from the patients before the operation and from healthy female controls (n = 5) ranging from 26 to 60 years old. Denaturation of plasma components was detected in SETARAM Micro DSC-II calorimeter. Our results showed in control group two main Tms (~56 and 63 °C as averages) with ΔH ~ 1.16 J g−1. In DCIS samples three Tms (~55.5; 60.6 and 65.5 °C) with ΔH ~ 1.01 J g−1, while in group with neoadjuvant chemotherapy four Tms (56.3; 60.9; 66.3 and 74.4 °C) with ΔH = 1.07 J g−1 were observed in average. These measurements demonstrated that neoadjuvant chemotherapy aggravates the thermodynamic changes in the blood plasma samples of invasive breast cancer patients.