New Blood Test Spots Cancer

August 8, 2004

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By Charlene Laino

WebMD Medical News Archive Reviewed By Michael Smith, MD

on Friday, December 13, 2002

Dec. 13, 2002 (San Antonio, Texas) -- In what's being called one of the

biggest advances in cancer research in years, scientists have developed a

blood test that can detect cancer with a greater than 90% accuracy. This

artificial intelligence -- already tested for cancers of the breast, ovary,

and lung -- could one day be used to detect many types of cancer.

The government researcher leading the development of the computer-assisted

technology is optimistic that a blood test for ovarian cancer could be

available as early as 2004. And tests for prostate, breast, and lung cancers

could soon follow, predicted Emanuel Petricoin III, PhD, co-director of the

Clinical Proteomics Program, a joint program of the FDA and the National

Cancer Institute.

The blood test could prove one of the biggest developments in cancer

research in years, he says. The benefits of the test would be twofold. Not

only would it offer a way to detect some cancers earlier, when they're still

curable, the test would also allow some patients to avoid unnecessary

biopsies and all the anxiety and risks that come with them.

But before it's ready for prime time, doctors meeting at the 25th Annual San

Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium cautioned the test needs to be validated in

large numbers of men and women in clinical trials.

The test involves scanning tiny amounts of blood for hidden patterns of

proteins that distinguish cancerous tissue from benign, much like the bar

codes on food and household products that reveal their price at the

supermarket checkout.

" All that's needed [for the quick fingerstick test] is a single drop of

blood, " Petricoin says. " The computer does the rest. "

The feasibility of the approach was first proved in ovarian cancer, an

often-deadly form of cancer because there is currently no way to detect it

early, in its curable stages.

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