Biomarkers for Ovarian Cancer, Identified
March 13, 2007 by Gloria Gamat
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
A team of researchers from the University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and universities in Greece and Italy have been able ton identify biomarkers unique the cells of blood vessels running through ovarian tumors.
According to study author Ronald Buckanovich, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of internal medicine and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School:
“Some of these genes, depending on how highly expressed they were in the tumor vasculature, were also prognostic of a patient’s survival.
We suspect when these genes are highly expressed it may be a sign of a tumor that’s able to grow blood vessels more efficiently, and therefore is more aggressive.
This may help us down the road in treatment decisions.”
These (preliminary) findings, appearing in the March 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, can be used in the future in the development of improved screening and diagnostic methods and treatment of ovarian cancer – one of the most difficult cancers to treat.
Find more details from the full report.
According to the American Cancer Society, even though ovarian cancer accounts for only 4% of all cancers among women, it ranks as the fifth cause of death from it. A majority of ovarian cancer patients are not diagnosed until they reach the later stages of the disease. Once the cancer has metastasized, it is much harder to treat. There is a need to detect ovarian cancer in its early stages. There are no effective and proven tests for finding ovarian cancer in the early stages like mammography for breast cancer.
One of the most promising new approaches that may deal with early detection of ovarian cancer is called Proteomics (Protein Expression Analysis), the study of proteins in the cells, tissues and body fluids. Even before a tumor can be felt, some researchers have found, the tumor begins secreting a distinctive pattern, or fingerprint of proteins. Here, you go beyond genes (DNA, the Genomic Analysis or structure of the human genome) and beyond Gene Expression (the measure of RNA content, like Her2/neu in breast cancer) to measure the actual proteins themselves.
Genomic Analysis is only important insofar as it influences Gene Expression Analysis, which is only important insofar as it influences Protein Expression Analysis (Proteomics), which is only important insofar as it influences Protein Function Analysis (are proteins active or inactive), which is only important insofar as it influences Cell Function Analysis (cell culture testing), which is only important insofar as it influences Disease Analysis (doing something to treat the patient and then making a measurement on the patient with CT/PET scanning), in that order. There is an inverse hierachy between relevance and ease of measurement.
There are many pathways to altered cellular (”forest”) function (hence all the different “trees” which correlate in different situations). It serves to validate functional profiling. The forest is looked at, and not the trees. Functional profiling measures what happens at the end (the effects on the forest), rather than the status of the individual trees. Cancer is a complex disease and needs to be attacked on many fronts.
A major obstacle in controlling cancer drug prices is the widespread inappropriate use of anti-cancer drugs. As the increasing numbers and types of anti-cancer drugs are developed, oncologists become more and more likely to misuse them in their practice.
The best thing to do is to combine these different tests in ways which make the most sense. The future of cancer therapy will be personalized treatments for individual patients, and will require a combination of novel diagnostics and therapeutics.
Source: Cell Function Analysis