Scientists from UC San Diego found a novel screening platform has flagged more than 95% of stage 1 cancers.
If validated by future studies, the approach offers a new way to detect the third-leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths in 2020.
The research is published in Nature Communications Medicine and was conducted by Scott M. Lippman et al.
In the study, researchers tested 139 stage 1 and 2 cancer patients and 184 controls is the first clinical test of a platform technology called high-conductance di-electrophoresis.
It detects extracellular vesicles (EVs), which contain tumor proteins that are released into circulation by cancer cells as part of a poorly understood intercellular communication network.
Artificial intelligence-enabled protein marker analysis is then used to predict the likelihood of malignancy.
The team found in addition to detecting 99.5% of stage 1 pancreatic cancers, the approach flagged 74.4% of stage 1 ovarian cancer and 73.1% of pathologic stage 1A lethally aggressive serous ovarian adenocarcinomas—all with more than 99% specificity—illustrating the potential value of this technology for early cancer detection.
These results are five times more accurate in detecting early-stage cancer than current liquid biopsy multi-cancer detection tests.
Early cancer detection research has yielded tremendous health benefits, resulting in screening methods that detect cancers of the cervix, breast, colon and rectum when they are highly curable.
Currently, however, only 5% of pancreatic cancers are diagnosed in stage 1 and only 10% in time for effective surgery.
In 2020, 46,774 Americans died of pancreatic cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Pancreatic cancer has the lowest five-year relative survival rate of all major cancer killers and is the only one for which both the incidence and death rates are increasing.
Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to detect early, at a stage when surgical resection, the only curative therapy, is possible. At this stage, patients typically have few if any symptoms.
If you care about pancreatic cancer, please read studies about herb that could help treat pancreatic cancer, and new therapy to kill pancreatic cancer from within.
For more information about pancreatic cancer, please see recent studies about a big cause of common pancreatic cancer, and results showing this plant compound may help pancreatic cancer patients.
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