A new study from UC San Diego Health 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 study is published in Nature Communications Medicine and was conducted by Scott M. Lippman et al.
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.
In the study, the team tested 139 stage 1 and 2 cancer patients and 184 healthy people 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.
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.
The team says these results are five times more accurate in detecting early-stage cancer than current liquid biopsy multi-cancer detection tests.
The findings showed the potential value of this technology for early cancer detection.
Liquid biopsy tests produce promising results for cancer therapy monitoring and disease relapse, but they can cause real harm to otherwise healthy people when used for early-disease screening due to unacceptably high false-positive rates that lead to diagnostic tests that are not only expensive but often dangerous.
The study is part of the effort to reduce the high death risk in pancreatic cancer. For example, a recent study developed promising drug for pancreatic cancer.
Another recent study at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and published in ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science also has developed an early test for pancreatic cancer.
Researchers found a protein found commonly in human blood might help with the detection of hard-to-diagnose pancreatic tumors.
They developed an approach using the protein’s structure and its function as a proxy for this.
The researchers also showed how its method can also be used to differentiate between benign and malignant tumors.
Pancreatic cancer is particularly insidious. It remains asymptomatic for a long time, which leads to very late diagnoses and therefore a low chance of treating it successfully.
Nine out of ten patients succumb to the disease within five years after being initially diagnosed.
At the same time, it is very difficult to distinguish between benign and malignant pancreatic tumors.
The only utilizable lab test is inconclusive as it can also be an indication, for example, of a chronically inflamed pancreas.
Even imaging techniques and tissue analyses often do not provide a clear differentiation between benign and malignant tumors to be made.
In the study, the team looked for a biomarker in human blood that could act as a kind of early warning system.
They chose the protein albumin, which occurs in large quantities in the blood.
Different tumors are known to alter the way it functions in the body in different ways. One of albumin’s jobs is to transport fatty acids into the cells.
Since a protein’s spatial structure determines the way it works, the researchers hypothesized that it should be possible to detect small structural changes in the protein in ill patients.
The team examined the blood serum of people with a benign or malignant pancreatic tumor and, for comparison, also samples from healthy people. Nearly 80 samples were analyzed.
The researchers were able to identify specific differences between the individual patient groups.
The spacing patterns and the local environment of the fatty acids were somewhat different in the patients with cancer than in those with a benign tumor as well as in the healthy patients.
The underlying mechanism of how the tumor changes the structure of albumin remains elusive.
The team says this is a promising approach to detect pancreatic cancer early and it needs to be tested on larger samples and to be refined further.
If you care about pancreatic cancer, please read studies about the key to preventing the spread of pancreatic cancer, and findings of a new way to treat pancreatic cancer more effectively.
For more information about pancreatic cancer, please see recent studies about this treatment may improve survival of pancreatic cancer and results showing this daily vitamin is critical to cancer prevention.
Copyright © 2022 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
