Blood Protein May Spot Pancreatic Cancer Early
Blood Protein May Spot Pancreatic Cancer Early
But more research is needed before test is used for monitoring or screening, researchers say
WEDNESDAY, June 24, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have discovered a protein that pancreatic tumors consistently shed into the blood, making a potentially significant advance toward a blood test that could catch the deadly cancer early.
Experts were cautiously optimistic about the findings, published online June 24 in the journal Nature.
More research is needed to make sure any blood test based on results is useful. And it's expected that it would first be used to monitor patients who have been treated for pancreatic cancer, said senior researcher Dr. Raghu Kalluri.
But the hope is that it can eventually enable early diagnosis.
That's the "holy grail" in pancreatic cancer research, said Kalluri, chair of cancer biology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Few people now survive pancreatic cancer because it's rarely caught early, when it can be cured with surgery. The symptoms, which include weight loss and jaundice, usually arise only after the disease has spread, he said.
Of all Americans diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, only 7 percent are still alive five years later, the National Cancer Institute says.
Scientists have tried, without great success, to find markers, or indicators, for pancreatic cancer -- proteins in the blood that consistently and specifically signal the presence of the disease.
The marker that Kalluri's team found appears to be better than any others studied so far, said Dr. Kenneth Yu, an oncologist who was not involved in the research.
"This is really impressive," said Yu, who treats and studies pancreatic cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "You rarely see something with 100 percent sensitivity and specificity."
Yu was referring to the fact that all pancreatic tumors analyzed in the study, from almost 250 patients, secreted high amounts of the marker -- a protein called GPC1. Just as important, the protein was not released at high levels from noncancerous cells.
For any blood test to be useful in the real world, Yu said, it has to reliably detect pancreatic tumors and also have a very low rate of "false positives."
Blood Protein May Spot Pancreatic Cancer Early
But more research is needed before test is used for monitoring or screening, researchers say
WEDNESDAY, June 24, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have discovered a protein that pancreatic tumors consistently shed into the blood, making a potentially significant advance toward a blood test that could catch the deadly cancer early.
Experts were cautiously optimistic about the findings, published online June 24 in the journal Nature.
More research is needed to make sure any blood test based on results is useful. And it's expected that it would first be used to monitor patients who have been treated for pancreatic cancer, said senior researcher Dr. Raghu Kalluri.
But the hope is that it can eventually enable early diagnosis.
That's the "holy grail" in pancreatic cancer research, said Kalluri, chair of cancer biology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Few people now survive pancreatic cancer because it's rarely caught early, when it can be cured with surgery. The symptoms, which include weight loss and jaundice, usually arise only after the disease has spread, he said.
Of all Americans diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, only 7 percent are still alive five years later, the National Cancer Institute says.
Scientists have tried, without great success, to find markers, or indicators, for pancreatic cancer -- proteins in the blood that consistently and specifically signal the presence of the disease.
The marker that Kalluri's team found appears to be better than any others studied so far, said Dr. Kenneth Yu, an oncologist who was not involved in the research.
"This is really impressive," said Yu, who treats and studies pancreatic cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "You rarely see something with 100 percent sensitivity and specificity."
Yu was referring to the fact that all pancreatic tumors analyzed in the study, from almost 250 patients, secreted high amounts of the marker -- a protein called GPC1. Just as important, the protein was not released at high levels from noncancerous cells.
For any blood test to be useful in the real world, Yu said, it has to reliably detect pancreatic tumors and also have a very low rate of "false positives."
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