According to latest breakthrough in research, a blood test to detect eight common cancers, even before their symptoms begin to appear, may become a reality soon. The study report appears in the latest issue of the journal Science and gives hope for early detection of these deadly diseases when it could still be treated more effectively.
The researchers have been trying for decades to develop a test that could predict cancers. Earlier proteins released from the tumors were the targets for the tests. Their detection could indicate progress of the cancers. While some of these are still in practice, not all of them are accurate enough. Recently DNA released from the tumors was being tested. Even this method did not seem to be 100 percent reliable.
This new study comes from the lab of Nickolas Papadopoulos, a professor of oncology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, who worked alongside several experts in the field to develop a combination of these two principles to develop a $500 test. Joshua Cohen, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the paper's first author explained that the DNA from the tumors carry mutations that are specific for the cancer. The team, he said, developed a “robust panel” of tests that could detect at least one mutation in the DNA that could predict the cancer.
Finally out of the several proteins and mutations assessed, 16 genes and eight proteins were finalized to be included in the test. Cristian Tomasetti, Ph.D., associate professor of oncology and biostatistics, who developed the algorithm said that the test was novel because it was capable of checking foe observing various DNA mutations as well as the proteins before giving out the results.
The test is now called CancerSEEK and would try to hunt for lung, breast, colon, pancreas, liver, stomach, ovary and esophagus cancers in a person who shows no signs of any of these cancers. Papadopoulos explained that these cancers were chosen on the basis of their prevalence among the populations and because many of these do not have a screening test at present.
For the study, the team gathered 1,005 participants newly diagnosed with these eight cancers. They noted that the signs of cancer could be detected in the blood test in around 70 percent of these individuals. A further 812 participants were included in the study who had had no diagnosis of the cancers. Only seven of these participants’ had a blood test showing positive for these cancers. This is a less than 1 percent false positive result. False positive rates need to be very low for a cancer detection tests to be considered feasible.
The ultimate aim of this endeavor is to find and detect the cancer in persons who have not been diagnosed already. In early stage cancers, the test was found to be posive in only 40 percent of the participants. This needs to be notched up for the test to be of use in screening populations for early stage cancers. Despite these numbers, the team says that this was encouraging and could mean a lot for people whose lives could be saved by early detection.
The researchers still have a long way to go in order to see if the test really works on the general population and prevents deaths by early cancer detection say experts. The scientists at the Hopkins are now testing their test on tens of thousands of apparently healthy volunteers who are enrolled in the Geisinger Health Plan in Pennsylvania. CancerSEEK would be tested to see if it can detect cancers where there are no symptoms, in apparently healthy participants. For obvious reasons, this would be a long experiment with the participants being followed up for years to see if they ever develop one of these cancers.
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