New Screening Tool Identifies 95% of Stage 1 Pancreatic Cancer

A novel screening platform has flagged more than 95 percent of stage 1 cancers, according to a pilot study published in Nature Communications Medicine. If validated by future studies, the approach offers a new way to detect the third-leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths in 2020.

Scott Lippman, MD, is director of the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and co-senior author of a new Nature Communications Medicine paper about a study showing that high-conductance di-electrophoresi detected 95 percent of early pancreatic cancers. Credit: UC San Diego Health Science The study of 139 stage 1 and 2 cancer patients and 184 controls is the first clinical test of a platform technology called high-conductance di-electrophoresis, developed at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health 12 years ago. It detects extracellular vesicles (EVs), which contain tumor proteins that are released into circulation by cancer cells as part of a poorly understood intercellular communication network. Artificial intelligence-enabled protein marker analysis is then used to predict the likelihood of malignancy. Read more . . . .

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