And still no progress while competitors move further...

And still no progress while competitors move further ahead...

Gastric cancer biomarker nearly 90% accurate, even in early stages:

Researchers have identified a blood protein that can be used as a marker of gastric and other cancers and is more accurate than existing diagnostic biomarkers, even in the early stages of the disease. The simple test may lead to the earlier diagnosis of often stealthy gastrointestinal cancers.Gastrointestinal cancers, which include esophageal, gastric, colorectal, liver, and pancreatic cancers, often go undetected. The late discovery of these cancers can impact the effectiveness of treatment and contributes to mortality rates.

While there are biomarkers used to detect cancer, they can be inaccurate and don’t always pick up all types, or they are technically complex and expensive to measure. Researchers from Nagoya University have identified a protein that is a reliable marker of gastric cancer, even in the early stages of the disease, and can be tested using a simple blood test.“Currently, blood tests to detect cancers, such as gastric, colorectal, and breast cancer, have used tumor markers like CEA and CA19-9,” said Takahiro Shinozuka, the study’s lead author. “However, these tumor markers do not always accurately detect all cancers, and their accuracy needs to be improved. Other markers have been proposed but have drawbacks, such as intricate, costly measurement procedures or invasive testing methods, that prevent their use.”Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is produced by colorectal cancer cells and released into the blood. However, not all colorectal cancers produce CEA, so a normal level doesn’t necessarily rule out cancer. Levels can also be elevated in breast, lung, and thyroid cancers, and CEA can be produced in non-cancerous conditions like liver disease, pancreatitis and ulcerative colitis. Meanwhile, carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) is released by pancreatic, gallbladder, lung and colon cancer cells, but levels can also be elevated in diabetes, pancreatitis, and other lung, urological and gynecological diseases.The researchers used a dataset of previously reported secretomes – proteins expressed by cells, tissues and organs – using gastric cancer cell lines to identify a new diagnostic biomarker that could be detected in blood. They found that stromal cell-derived factor 4 (SDF4) was a potential serum diagnostic tumor marker.They collected blood samples from 582 patients with gastric, breast, colorectal, pancreatic, esophageal and liver cancer, and 80 healthy controls, and found that SDF4 was consistently elevated in the cancer samples. In gastric cancer patients, the SDF4 level increased with the clinical stage, and levels were significantly higher in patients with stage 1 gastric cancer compared with healthy controls, suggesting that the test could detect gastric cancer early, before symptoms appeared.

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