Researchers find biomarkers for early stage pancreatic cancer

Scientists report that they have developed a urine test that may detect pancreatic cancer at an early stage. When the three proteins were combined, they detected patients with stages I-II pancreatic cancer with more than 90 percent accuracy.

They say the discovery could lead to a non-invasive, cheap test to screen people at high risk of developing the disease.

It was a team at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, who made the breakthrough.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, there’s still a long way to go before we know if this research could lead to a test that would help detect pancreatic cancer early.

“We’ve always been keen to develop a diagnostic test in urine as it has several advantages over using blood”. Patients suffering from chronic pancreatitis had significantly lower levels than cancer patients.

Sufferers with pancreatic most cancers have been discovered to have excessive ranges of the proteins LYVE1, REG1A and TFF1, out of about 1500 proteins the researchers discovered within the samples, when in comparison with the wholesome sufferers.

Co-author Prof Nick Lemoine of the Barts Cancer Institute, said: “It’s really exciting because for the first time we might be able to bring forward the window of opportunity for patients with pancreatic cancer – from something that is advanced and late stage to something that is early stage and potentially curable by surgery”.

“With pancreatic cancer, patients are usually diagnosed when the cancer is already at a terminal stage, but if diagnosed at stage two, the survival rate is 20 per cent, and at stage one, the survival rate for patients with very small tumors can increase up to 60 per cent”.

But – crucially – the protein levels couldn’t reliably tell the difference between chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer patients.

Four out of five people with the disease are diagnosed when it has already spread, meaning they can not have surgery – the only potential cure.

Pancreatic cancer is deadly, with only 5 percent of its victims surviving for five years.

The Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund said this was “an exciting finding” and that an early diagnostic test was “much needed”.

More research is planned which will look at those who have a genetic predisposition for the disease to further improve early diagnosis rates.

“It’s hard to ignore the fact that there has been very little progress in treating the disease over the past four decades”, Flora Malein of Cancer Research UK said. Moreover, it readily distinguishes between pancreatic cancer and chronic pancreatitis, conditions that are easily mistaken for each other.

As with other cancers, the earlier a patient is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the greater their likelihood of successful treatment.

Each of the three proteins was elevated in urine samples from PDAC patients, but not in urine samples from healthy patients.

People at high risk of pancreatic cancer include those with a family history of the disease, heavy smokers, the obese, and people over the age of 50 newly diagnosed with diabetes.