September 16th, 2011
Michael Wang, M.D., Ph.D., right, assistant professor of pathology and anatomical sciences, and Li-Qun Gu, Ph.D., associate professor of biological engineering, have developed a new technology for the early detection of lung cancer. Worldwide and in the United States, lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death. Credit: University of Missouri School of Medicine
When lung cancer strikes, it often spreads silently into more advanced stages before being detected. In a new article published in Nature Nanotechnology, biological engineers and medical scientists at the University of Missouri reveal how their discovery could provide a much earlier warning signal.
“Early detection can save lives, but there is currently no proven screening test available for lung cancer,” said Michael Wang, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at MU and a corresponding author for the article. “We’ve developed highly sensitive technology that can detect a specific molecule type in the bloodstream when lung cancer is present.”
September 13th, 2011
LONDON: Coming soon: A simple blood test to detect lung cancer, say scientists.
An international team, led by Dr Samir Hanash of the Hutchinson Center in Seattle, claims it is one step closer to being able to spot lung cancer before the onset of symptoms.
“Developing a blood test to detect lung cancer is increasingly within reach,” the ‘Daily Express’ quoted Hanash as saying.
Previously undiscovered protein molecules in the blood of sufferers could be key to developing the test — an alternative to invasive diagnostic methods. The molecules, initially discovered in mice, were found to be similar in humans, says the team.
September 12th, 2011
From BMWi’s Global Innovation Series
“…Dweik’s research has shown that breathprints can be quite different between lung cancer patients. Dweik uses an “electronic nose” with 32 sensors — each sensor reacts differently to different compounds in your breath. “When you breathe over these sensors, they change in different ways and create a smellprint that is quite distinct between people who have cancer and people who do not, with 85% accuracy.” Of course, medicine isn’t perfect, and the drawback to the electronic nose is that Dweik’s team doesn’t yet know what compounds in breath give that smell signature — they could say if there is lung cancer or not, but can’t currently indicate why or which gas indicates cancer. Dweik admits that the smellprint shows proof of concept, but is lacking the link to the biology of the cancer. It’s a promising field, and smellprints and breathalyzer sensors will need to be used symbiotically to help doctors develop the technology even further. Breathprints should help doctors figure out what gases and compounds are indicative of what diseases, and then attune sensors to detect those compounds.
For now, the lung cancer smellprint is a big step. Lung cancer typically presents itself late — a patient might cough up blood, then have a biopsy done, but by that point, the cancer has advanced. Unlike breast cancer, which can be detected and treated early with annual mammograms, there isn’t a screening test for lung cancer, which means that this breath analysis technology could go a long way toward saving lives…”
August 18th, 2011
Study Shows Some Dogs Can Be Trained to Identify Lung Cancer When They Sniff a Person’s Breath
By Brenda Goodman,WebMD Health News
Aug. 17, 2011 — German researchers say that highly trained dogs are able to reliably sniff out lung cancer in human breath.
In its early stages, lung cancer has few symptoms, making it difficult for doctors to catch it early, when it’s still treatable.
“This is the holy grail,” says Suresh S. Ramalingam, MD, associate professor and director of the lung program at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta.
“The whole field is focused on using something that’s readily available that does not involve an expensive surgery or scan that would allow us to find early cancers,” says Ramalingam, who is developing technology that aims to replicate the ability of dogs to smell trace amount of chemicals produced by cancerous tumors. He was not involved in the research.
August 17th, 2011
From Public Radio International’s Here and Now
Dr. Peter Mazzone, Pulmonologist at the Cleveland Clinic, is developing a breath test that he calls an “electronic nose.” It sits on a cart, looks like a big computer, and his patients breath into a mouthpiece on the machine. The machine tells him what patterns of chemicals are coming out patients’ breath. This allows him to look for markers that might indicate diseases like diabetes, asthma or even lung cancer.
With the breath test, patients can avoid risky biopsies or expensive imaging scans. Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic say they have an 85 percent accuracy in spotting lung cancer using a breathalyzer.
July 9th, 2011
July 07, 2011
by Sruthi Valluri, DOTmed News
A new non-invasive, three-dimensional test by VisionGate Inc. could help detect lung cancer in its early stages The test, called LuCED, would be the first of its kind to screen for early stage-lung cancer without the use of X-rays.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the world. The disease will claim 154,000 lives in the United States this year alone, which accounts for more deaths than breast cancer, prostate cancer and ovarian cancer combined.
July 7th, 2011
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Jul 06, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Verisante Technology, Inc. CA: VRS -2.47% (otcqx:VRSEF)(pink sheets:VRSEF) (the “Company” or “Verisante”) is pleased to announce that the results of a pilot study on lung cancer detection will be published in the prestigious Journal of Thoracic Oncology in July. The results of the pilot study indicate that the Company’s system technology could set a new standard for the early detection of lung cancer.
The Company owns, co-owns, or has the exclusive rights to all of the technology used in the pilot study, which was generously funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (“CIHR”) and the Canadian Cancer Society.
Verisante is currently developing a commercial prototype of the laser Raman system, the Verisante Core(TM), licensed from the BC Cancer Agency which, when combined with the ClearVu(TM) and ClearVu Elite(TM) systems recently acquired from Perceptronics Medical Inc., reduces false positives by over 75% compared to current endoscopic methods.
June 29th, 2011
By Jason Kane at the PBS Newshour
It’s official: CT scans reduce the risk of death for heavy smokers with lung cancer by 20 percent compared to chest X-rays.
After a nearly decade-long study, results from the National Lung Screening Trial were published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The findings made headlines in November 2010 when the National Cancer Institute announced that it had become clear that the group receiving three-dimensional X-ray tests known as low-dose helical CT scans had a significantly higher chance of surviving than those receiving standard chest X-ray tests.
It’s the first type of screening known to reduce the risk of death from lung cancer, despite a high rate of false positive tests from the scans.
March 1st, 2011
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Recent research suggests vitamin D may be able to stop or prevent cancer. Now, a new study finds an enzyme that plays a role in metabolizing vitamin D can predict
lung cancer survival.
The study, from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, suggests that this enzyme stops the anti-cancer effects of vitamin D.
Levels of the enzyme, called CYP24A1, were elevated as much as 50 times in lung adenocarcinoma compared with normal lung tissue. The higher the level of CYP24A1, the more likely tumors were to be aggressive. About a third of lung cancer patients had high levels of the enzyme. After five years, those patients had nearly half the survival rate as patients with low levels of the enzyme.
Researchers then linked this to how CYP24A1 interacts with calcitriol, the active form of vitamin D. CYP24A1 breaks down calcitriol, which has a normal and crucial role when kept in check. But when levels of CYP24A1 climb, the enzyme begins to hinder the positive anti-cancer effects of vitamin D.
Results of the study appear in Clinical Cancer Research.
February 6th, 2011
Until recently, no screening test for lung cancer had ever shown the ability to detect this malignancy early enough to make a difference in survival.
But in November, the National Cancer Institute released initial results of a study, involving 53,000 former and heavy smokers, which compared chest X-rays to spiral computed tomography and found a 20 percent reduction in mortality in the group getting annual spiral CT.
