Cheap Blood Test Detects Pancreatic Cancer Before it Spreads
The deadly cancer is often not found until it has spread to other parts of the body.
Researchers have developed a simple blood test to detect pancreatic cancer before it spreads to other sites in the body. The test could be used for routine screening to improve the disease’s low survival rate1.
“It’s a very pragmatic, really translatable solution” that builds on many advances in the field, says Simone Schürle-Finke, a biomedical engineer at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. The results are described in Science Translational Medicine today.
Most pancreatic cancers begin in the ducts that secrete enzymes used to digest food. But this form of cancer often doesn’t cause recognizable symptoms and isn’t detectable until it has metastasized and spread, making it difficult to treat. In 2022, some 467,000 people died of the disease globally. “There is a huge need for developing new ways of detecting pancreatic cancer early,” says study co-author Jared Fischer, a molecular biologist at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland.
Telltale proteins
Fischer and his colleagues focused on detecting enzymes called proteases, which break down proteins and are active in tumours, even from the very early stages. They specifically looked at the activity of matrix metalloproteinases involved in chewing up collagen and the extracellular matrix, which helps tumours to invade the body.
