You can call ‘em lung-cancer bloodhounds
Published: June 16, 2005
If all goes as planned in the Wistar Institute laboratory of Dr. David W. Speicher, he will one daywalk into his physician’s office for a routine checkup and wait patiently while his doctor draws an extra tube of blood.
And the contents of that tube could foretell early signs of any number of cancers, including the first signs of lung cancer.
According to Speicher, a blood test to detect lung cancer is only five, perhaps 10, years away from being a reality. He’s leading a collaborative effort to develop just that with fellow scientists from Wistar, the University of Pennsylvania and the Fox Chase Cancer Center.
It’s one example of the breakthroughs in cancer research that Philadelphia scientists are working on.
Partly because early detection is so difficult, lung cancer is considered the deadliest cancer in the country, killing more Americans than any other form of cancer.
Ironically, the lung cancer blood test initiative is being funded with part of a tobacco settlement awarded to Pennsylvania and designed to encourage collaborative efforts.
Speicher’s research team is focused on the burgeoning areas of cancer research involving tools known as proteomics and genomics — proteins and genes in the blood that can be used to indicate the presence of early cancer.
Like all cells in the body, lungcancer cells release characteristic proteins into the bloodstream. Using sophistica ted computers to study the protein’s “signatures” — the process called proteomics — Speicher is working to find a marker for lung cancer that will ultimately lead to an inexpensive, accurate blood test.
Biomark ers already exist for some cancers. One of the best known is PSA, which helps detect prostate cancer. Another biomarker exists for ovarian cancer, and there are several for colon cancer, but Speicher notes that they are not sophisticated enough to provide reliable data.
And though proteomics has been around for nearly 10 years, Speicher notes that it’s taken that long to develop the technology to accurately analyze blood samples. “One analogy would be finding a needle in a haystack,” said Speicher. “Another would be mining for diamonds. We could get down a couple of layers, but we couldn’t get down to where the diamonds were. The cancer biomarkers are that deep.”
The process also includes the work of aWistar associate professor, Dr. Louise C. Showe, who is studying specific immune -system cells to detect early-stage lung cancer. Showe compares active genes in cancer cells with active genes in normal cells to find out which genes are pivotal in specific cancers.
Already, Showe’s laboratory has identified very early cases of a rare cancer called cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, and is working to apply similar processes to detect early-stage lung cancer.
Besides helping to detect cancers earlier, the routine blood test being developed at Wistar, Speicher predicts, will one day serve as a screening tool for an individual’s risks of developing various cancers, help predict how well a patient will respond to various therapies — even foreshadow a patient’s outcome or chance of relapse.
“From that extra tube of blood,” Speicher hopes, “the doctor will be able to develop your entire cancer profile.”
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