Experimental blood test detects early-stage pancreatic cancer

An experimental blood test has been found to detect early-stage pancreatic cancer more effectively than other available tests, paving the way for it to be used as a potential diagnostic method in future. That’s according to a new study published in the journal Cancer Letters.

“Catching pancreatic cancer early dramatically improves survival, but our current tools for doing so are limited,” said co-corresponding author Professor Brian Haab, from the Van Andel Institute (VAI). “Our results reveal that our combination test improves accurate detection of pancreatic cancer in a lab setting by 27%.”

The new test works by detecting two sugars — CA199.STRA and CA19-9 — that are produced by pancreatic cancer cells and escape into the bloodstream. CA19-9 is the current gold-standard biomarker for pancreatic cancer. Haab’s lab identified CA199.STRA as a cancer biomarker and developed the technology to detect it.

The new study was made possible by a longstanding collaboration of researchers who participate in the US National Cancer Institute’s Early Detection Research Network (EDRN), and resulted from double-blinded assessments of several pancreatic cancer biomarker candidates by EDRN-affiliated labs at VAI, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and the University of Nebraska. This is understood to be the first time multiple pancreatic cancer biomarkers from different labs have been evaluated in combination.

On its own, the CA19-9 test correctly identified 44% of pancreatic cancer samples in the lab. When CA199.STRA was added, the new combination test correctly identified 71% of pancreatic cancer samples. The combination test also greatly reduced the number of false negatives while maintaining a low false positive rate.

The analysis also revealed that combining CA199.STRA, CA19-9 and a protein biomarker called LRG1 improved specificity, which refers to a test’s ability to return a negative result in samples without cancer. The three-panel test accurately identified nearly all cases correctly and had far fewer false positives than CA19-9 alone.

“Another take-home message from this study is the importance of having multiple different validated biomarkers for pancreatic cancer,” Haab said. “A one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. It’s encouraging that we have many promising candidates that can be combined to better detect cancer.”

The next step is to evaluate the test’s effectiveness in a clinical lab, rather than an academic lab.

Image caption: Pancreatic tissue with the biomarker CA199.STRA in yellow. Courtesy of the Haab Lab, Van Andel Institute.