Overview
- Researchers grew three-week, three-dimensional breast organoids from tissue donated by 13 healthy young women to better mimic human breast complexity.
- The team exposed organoids to individual chemicals and to a low-dose mixture of BPA, BPS and BPF and found the combined bisphenols disrupted normal development more than any single compound.
- The molecular and DNA-modification changes linked to the bisphenol mixture mapped most closely to signatures seen in invasive lobular carcinoma in human cancer datasets.
- The peer-reviewed paper, published in PNAS on Thursday, emphasizes the results do not prove the chemicals cause cancer and notes limits including small donor diversity and short lab timelines.
- If larger, diverse human studies confirm persistent exposure-related molecular ‘scars,’ such markers could help track past exposures and refine breast-cancer risk assessment and screening.