April 26, 2024

New Screening Tool Identifies 95% of Stage 1 Pancreatic Cancer

The study of 139 phase 1 and 2 cancer patients and 184 controls is the very first scientific test of a platform technology called high-conductance di-electrophoresis, developed at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health 12 years ago. Early cancer detection research has yielded remarkable health advantages, Lippman said, resulting in screening techniques that find cancers of the cervix, rectum, breast and colon when they are extremely curable.” Pancreatic cancer has the most affordable five-year relative survival rate of all major cancer killers and is the just one for which both the occurrence and death rates are increasing,” stated Andrew Lowy, MD, scientific director for Cancer Surgery at UC San Diego Health Moores Cancer Center, and chief of Division of Surgical Oncology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “Pancreatic cancer is notoriously hard to detect early, at a phase when surgical resection, the only alleviative treatment, is possible.

UC San Diego research study finds telltale proteins released into flow by cancer cells.
An unique screening platform has flagged more than 95 percent of phase 1 cancers, according to a pilot research study published in Nature Communications Medicine. The approach uses a new method to find the third-leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths in 2020 if validated by future research studies.
Scott Lippman, MD, is director of the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and co-senior author of a brand-new Nature Communications Medicine paper about a research study revealing that high-conductance di-electrophoresis detected 95 percent of early pancreatic cancers. Credit: UC San Diego Health Science
The research study of 139 stage 1 and 2 cancer clients and 184 controls is the very first medical test of a platform innovation called high-conductance di-electrophoresis, developed at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health 12 years back. It discovers extracellular vesicles (EVs), which include tumor proteins that are released into flow by cancer cells as part of an inadequately understood intercellular communication network. Artificial intelligence-enabled protein marker analysis is then used to anticipate the possibility of malignancy.

In addition to identifying 95.5 percent of phase 1 pancreatic cancers, the technique flagged 74.4 percent of stage 1 ovarian cancer and 73.1 percent of pathologic stage 1A lethally aggressive serous ovarian adenocarcinomas– all with more than 99 percent uniqueness– highlighting the possible value of this technology for early cancer detection.
” The pancreatic cancer outcome is especially appealing,” stated Scott M. Lippman, MD, director of Moores Cancer Center, primary Investigator of the Stand Up To Cancer– Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Interception Dream Team, and co-senior author of the paper. “These outcomes are five times more precise in spotting early-stage cancer than present liquid biopsy multi-cancer detection tests.”
Liquid biopsy tests produce appealing results for cancer treatment tracking and illness regression, Lippman stated, “however they can trigger real harm to otherwise healthy individuals when used for early-disease screening due to unacceptably high false-positive rates that lead to diagnostic tests that are not only costly, however typically hazardous.”
Andrew Lowy, MD, scientific director for Cancer Surgery at UC San Diego Health Moores Cancer Center. Credit: UC San Diego Health Sciences
Early cancer detection research study has yielded significant health advantages, Lippman stated, resulting in screening techniques that discover cancers of the cervix, colon, rectum and breast when they are highly curable. Presently, however, only 5 percent of pancreatic cancers are diagnosed in stage 1 and only 10 percent in time for reliable surgery. In 2020, 46,774 Americans died of pancreatic cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
” Pancreatic cancer has the most affordable five-year relative survival rate of all significant cancer killers and is the only one for which both the occurrence and death rates are increasing,” stated Andrew Lowy, MD, scientific director for Cancer Surgery at UC San Diego Health Moores Cancer Center, and chief of Division of Surgical Oncology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “Pancreatic cancer is notoriously challenging to detect early, at a stage when surgical resection, the only curative therapy, is possible. At this phase, clients normally have couple of if any symptoms.”
If study results are validated, Lippman said, “we can considerably lower the mortality from this disease which will quickly end up being the second-leading cause of cancer mortality in the U.S.”
Referral: “Early-stage multi-cancer detection using an extracellular blister protein-based blood test” by Juan Pablo Hinestrosa, Razelle Kurzrock, Jean M. Lewis, Nicholas J. Schork, Gregor Schroeder, Ashish M. Kamat, Andrew M. Lowy, Ramez N. Eskander, Orlando Perrera, David Searson, Kiarash Rastegar, Jake R. Hughes, Victor Ortiz, Iryna Clark, Heath I. Balcer, Larry Arakelyan, Robert Turner, Paul R. Billings, Mark J. Adler, Scott M. Lippman and Rajaram Krishnan, 17 March 2022, Communications Medicine.DOI: 10.1038/ s43856-022-00088-6.
Co-authors consist of: Razelle Kurzrock, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Nicholas J. Schork of The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Phoenix, AZ, USA and City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA; Ashish M. Kamat of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; Ramez N. Eskander UC San Diego; Mark J. Adler of the San Diego Cancer Research Institute; Pablo Hinestrosa, Jean M. Lewis, Gregor Schroeder, Orlando Perrera, David Searson, Kiarash Rastegar, Jake R. Hughes, Victor Ortiz, Iryna Clark, Heath I. Balcer, Larry Arakelyan, Robert Turner, Paul R. Billings, and Rajaram Krishnan, all of Biological Dynamics, San Diego, CA.