Female cancers: Institut Curie's pioneering expertise in circulating biomarkers and real-world studies

Real-world data, a major lever for improving the management of very rare breast cancers

Inflammatory breast cancers are a highly aggressive, extremely rare subtype (less than 4% of breast cancers) for which therapeutic solutions remain very insufficient. From data from the French national ESME database (Epidemiology-Medical-Economic Strategy), teams from Institut Curie conducted a real-world study on 313 patients treated for de novo metastatic inflammatory breast cancer between 2008 and 2022.

"Real-world data – clinical, administrative, pharmaceutical, etc. – reflect patients' daily lives and complement traditional clinical trials. At Institut Curie, we are committed to harnessing the immense potential of this real-world data to refine therapeutic strategies, extend the use of effective treatments to more complex indications, and pave the way for almost tailor-made care," says Dr. Diana Bello Roufai, Deputy Head of the Medical Oncology Department at Institut Curie.

Real-world study results show that de novo metastatic hormone-dependent inflammatory breast cancer is associated with significantly shorter survival than that observed in non-inflammatory forms of the disease. These studies challenge the paradigm of first-line chemotherapy, show reduced efficacy of targeted therapies (CDK4/6 inhibitors), and highlight the need for prospective studies dedicated to hormone-dependent metastatic inflammatory breast cancer.

HPV-related cancers: detecting circulating tumor DNA from papillomavirus to track recurrences

Tracking the real-time evolution of cancer through minimally invasive and easily reproducible liquid biopsies is a vast and extremely promising area of research in oncology. "Based on the analysis of biomarkers such as circulating tumor DNA, these adaptive medicine strategies initiated at Institut Curie over 20 years ago have proven their clinical benefit in breast cancers but had not yet been explored in HPV-related cancers," declares Prof. Francois-Clément Bidard, medical oncologist at Institut Curie, Director of the Clinical Investigation Center of Institut Curie (Inserm CIC-2501). "Today, the CirCa-HPV study reveals that ctDNA detection could become a clinically relevant tool for monitoring HPV-induced cancers of the cervix, anus, vulva, etc."

Most cervical, vulvar, anal, and penile cancers are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) and contain HPV DNA sequences in the tumor cell genome. Led by Institut Curie, the CirCa-HPV study aims to demonstrate the clinical benefit of detecting circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) of HPV in plasma to detect recurrences early in 157 patients who have already been treated for HPV-induced pelvic cancer. The results reveal that the presence of HPV ctDNA is an extremely specific marker for detecting recurrences (99.2%), but its sensitivity remains limited (55.6%), due for example to too small a quantity of ctDNA. Furthermore, the study highlighted 4 locoregional recurrences out of 6 (66.7%), with no difference based on the location of the primary tumor. The overall data therefore highlight the potential clinical interest of detecting HPV ctDNA as a complement to conventional imaging during patient follow-up.

It should also be noted that work carried out at Institut Curie and presented in Madrid used a strictly identical technique to evaluate the prognostic value of ctDNA detection in patients with anal cancer.

More Institut Curie news at ESMO 2026 Congress