Two research teams have developed new noninvasive tests that use either blood or saliva samples to diagnose cases of colorectal cancer or prostate cancer, respectively.
Presented today at the 2021 AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo, these tests could facilitate screening efforts for colorectal cancer and allow clinicians to better distinguish early-stage prostate cancer from more benign prostate conditions.
Colorectal cancer is one of the leading causes of death from cancer worldwide, and detecting the disease early is essential for a good prognosis. Although colonoscopies are the most effective tools for diagnosis, many patients avoid getting them due to their invasive nature. Other tests such as those for occult blood in stool are less invasive, but don’t have the same accuracy and performance, and can yield false positives that lead to unnecessary follow-up colonoscopies for patients.
A scientific team from the Medical Research Institute in Alexandria, Egypt, has developed a noninvasive blood test that may help identify cases of colorectal cancer and improve patient compliance with screening. Using multiplex bead technology, the researchers examined levels of the inflammatory proteins eotaxin-1, MIP-1 beta, G-CSF, VEGF-A, and Fas ligand in 35 patients with colorectal cancer and 52 individuals without cancer. The first four proteins were elevated in the cancer patients, suggesting these proteins could serve as potential biomarkers for future screening efforts.
The researchers also found that the multiplex bead test outperformed routine stool occult blood tests.
Another challenge in cancer care is the diagnosis of prostate cancer, one of the most common cancers in men. Clinicians currently use invasive biopsies or tests for prostate-specific antigen levels to diagnose prostate cancer in the clinic. But prostate cancer can be hard to spot during the early stages and can be tricky to distinguish from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), a benign enlargement of the prostate that can appear as men age.
In an effort to solve these issues, researchers at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran, have developed a new test for prostate cancer that uses saliva samples, which can be collected repeatedly and noninvasively. Their test distinguishes prostate cancer from BPH by testing saliva for 8 different microRNAs that either support or suppress tumor growth.
The researchers validated their test with saliva samples from 180 men between 45 and 50 years of age, 60 of whom had been diagnosed with prostate cancer using standard methods and 60 of whom had been diagnosed with BPH.
