Credit: Johns Hopkins University

Researchers say a blood test combining two different types of clue could make it easier to detect cancers in early stages. The ‘CancerSEEK’ test combines both DNA mutation and released proteins to spot the cancer.

To date, blood tests have just concentrated on one of the two approaches. The former takes advantage of the way the bloodstream shows tiny traces of the way cancer mutates the DNA in cells. The latter is based on the fact that cancer often releases proteins into the body, giving away its presence. The test combines checks for 16 gene mutations and eight proteins.

In a trial, the researchers at Johns Hopkins University ran the blood test on 1,005 patients who were known to have one of eight cancer types but where the cancer hadn’t yet spread to other tissues. Overall the blood test ‘detected’ 70 percent of the cancers. That’s particularly promising as several of the cancers involved, including pancreatic cancer, can’t currently be detected until symptoms develop, at which point treatment is usually too late.

It will be several years at least before testing of the process can be considered conclusive, with the next step being to test it on people who currently haven’t been diagnosed with cancer. The biggest note of caution from this initial study was that the detection rate was considerably lower with patients whose cancers were at the earliest stages of development that still showed symptoms.

That could mean the test doesn’t work reliably enough on cancers that have not yet become symptomatic. It’s also possible that with some cancers the earlier diagnosis wouldn’t be that beneficial because the effects of immediate treatment would outweigh the risks of waiting to see how the cancer developed.

In the long run, if further testing does show the technique is viable, the researchers say it could be turned into an annual screening test.

[Via: BBC]