Breast cancer (BCa) is the most frequent malignant tumor in females worldwide. In developing countries, reduced survival rates are explained by early detection programs insufficiency, leading to high percentage of women presenting with late-stage BCa, along with delays related to treatment and the lack of adequate treatment and diagnosis facilities. Despite varied approaches that have the potential to detect BCa, especially mammography, there is a challenge in early detection owing to some significant limitations, including low sensitivity and high false positive rates. So, there is urgent require to identify and discover easy, non-invasive and specific tool that may improve BCa detection. Among epigenetic changes is DNA methylation which is an important as gene expression regulators. In BCa, aberrant DNA methylation between normal and cancerous breast tissue have the potential to serve as diagnostic and/or prognostic approach. Detection of aberrations in DNA methylation using blood samples has a great benefit for being a marker for detection and prediction of breast cancer. 

Menha Swellam is a Professor of Biochemistry at Biochemistry department- Biotechnology Research Institute, National Research Centre, Egypt since 2010. She is a member of editorial board and a peer reviewer of international journals. Supervised many MsCs and PhDs, a principal investigator for national projects, member of the Egyptian permanent promotion council. Has published over 70 peer reviewed manuscripts in PubMed and Scopus cited journals (Scopus ID: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=56065210800). She has been recognized in 2008 by Encouraging National Research Centre prize from National research Centre, and in 2009 by Encouraging State prize from the by the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, then in 2017 a prize of National Centre for Research in Advanced Sciences. She is the Founder and the Head for High Throughput Molecular and Genetic Technology lab in the Centre of Excellences and Advanced Sciences, National Research Centre which is facilitated with next generation sequencers and microarray systems.