By Admin at 5 Jan 2016, 16:38 PM

Ovarian cancer causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system, even though it only causes 3 percent of cancers in U.S. women. Its high death toll is due to the fact that, at its earliest stages, ovarian cancer typically causes no symptoms.

This means diagnosis may not occur until much later, when the disease is no longer treatable. When diagnosed at an early stage, ovarian cancer has a five-year survival rate of 94 percent, but when diagnosed in the late stages this drops to 44 percent.

Unfortunately, only about 20 percent of ovarian cancers are currently detected in the early stages. A new blood test may change that, however, according to a study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The researchers used advanced liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry techniques and computational algorithms to identify a biomarker that can be used to screen for early-stage ovarian cancer. Initially, about 1,000 potential markers were found.

This was reduced to 255 after scientists removed duplicates and unrelated molecules. Those 255 compounds were then further analyzed using a learning algorithm to remove those that did not contribute to the predictive accuracy of the screening.

Ultimately, the researchers identified 16 metabolite compounds in all that, when analyzed via blood samples, distinguished between women with ovarian cancer and those without (metabolites are molecules produced by enzymatic reactions).

Perhaps best of all, the new approach had an accuracy rate of 90 percent when separating 46 women with early-stage ovarian cancer from 49 who did not have the disease.

The researchers plan to study samples from a larger number of women, including those from different ethnic and racial groups, to determine whether there are different metabolites that could serve as biomarkers for the disease among different populations.

Study author Facundo Fernández, a professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, told Medical Xpress:

"Once you know what these molecules are, the next step would be to set up a clinical assay … Mass spectrometry is a common tool in this field. We could use a clinical mass spectrometer to look at only the molecules we are interested in. Moving this to a clinical assay would take work, but I don't see any technical barriers to doing it."

The results serve as the “foundation of a clinically significant diagnostic test,” and the hope is that one day a simple blood test may be able to detect ovarian cancer in its earliest stages.

Sources:

Scientific Reports November 17, 2015
Medical Xpress November 27, 2015
International Business Times November 19, 2015
American Cancer Society, Ovarian Cancer

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