Blood Test May Aid In Lung Cancer Diagnosis And Reduce Unnecessary Invasive Procedures
Of the nearly 150,000 abnormal chest X-rays performed each year in the United States, 25 percent of patients will display only benign lung pathologies on further surgical examination.
This false-positive rate has important clinical implications in cost and side effects. A recent report in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that CT scans, often used as a follow-up to X-rays, were linked to cancer because of their high doses of radiation.
Steven Dubinett, M.D., professor of medicine and pathology, and director of the Lung Cancer Research Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, said that while findings regarding the detrimental effects of imaging studies like CT scanning are still somewhat controversial, the need for more accurate testing is not.
In a study presented at the AACR-IASLC Joint Conference on Molecular Origins of Lung Cancer, Dubinett and colleagues assembled a 40-marker panel of potential lung cancer biomarkers based on previous investigations from 90 patients with lung cancer as well as 56 control patients thought to be at high risk due to their smoking histories.
“The diagnosis of an indeterminate pulmonary lesion can be difficult, and current methods for confirming an abnormal imaging study include invasive procedures for biopsies,” said Dubinett. “We anticipate that in the future, blood tests will be clinically relevant and lead to reduced use of more invasive diagnostic measures.” Read more
‘Junk DNA’ Could Spotlight Breast And Bowel Cancer
Cancer Research UK funded scientists have found that a group of rogue genetic messengers, produced by DNA sequences commonly known as ‘junk DNA’, could help diagnose breast and bowel cancer. Their research is published in the journal Genomics.
The researchers, led by Dr Cristina Tufarelli at the University of Nottingham, discovered that seven of these faulty genetic messengers – known as chimeric transcripts – are more common in breast cancer cells. Five were only present in breast cancer cells while two were found in both normal and breast cancer cells.
These rogue messengers are produced by DNA sequences called LINE-1 (L1). Despite being labelled as ‘junk DNA’ it is clear that some of these sequences have important roles in the genome, such as influencing when genes are switched on.
L1s carry a switch that is able to randomly turn on nearby genes. When genes are inappropriately switched on in this way, they make the rogue genetic messengers that can sabotage the normal functioning of cells. To prevent the potentially damaging effects of these rogue elements, normal cells silence L1s with a chemical ‘off switch’. Read more