When it comes to detecting cancers, ovarian cancer has long been proclaimed one of the hardest cancers to find. That’s because it’s usually fairly advanced before it’s found and can be treated. However, new research is finding new biomarkers for ovarian cancer, which could help doctors identify and treat it. According to a recent news article,
“UC San Diego researchers say they have found a potential new diagnostic for ovarian cancer, one of the most difficult cancers to detect and treat.
The discovery of six isoforms of messenger RNA specific to ovarian cancer could also lead to new therapies, the researchers say in a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (If the article is not yet live, please check back later).
Christian L. Barrett was the study's first author; the senior author was Kelly A Frazer.
Ovarian cancers typically don't show symptoms until well-established. While most respond to therapy at first, recurrences become progressively more difficult to treat.
Scientists at UCSD School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center used bioinformatics to screen public genetic databases sponsored by the NIH, eventually finding six mRNA isoforms that were reliably present in 296 ovarian cancer samples but not present in 1,839 normal tissue samples. These molecules are specific enough to be used in a test for the early detection of ovarian cancer, the scientists said.
Moreover, some of the mRNA code for proteins representing potential new therapeutic targets, the paper found.
"We were inspired by many studies aimed at using DNA to detect cancer," Barrett said in a UCSD press release. "But we wondered if we could instead develop an ovarian cancer detection test based on tumor-specific mRNA that has disseminated from cancer cells to the cervix and can be collected during a routine Pap test."
The researchers validated their findings by searching for and finding these mRNA isoforms in ovarian cancer cells grown in the lab. They suggest that similar testing could be done for 30 other cancers in which sufficient amounts of mRNA have already detected.”
Read the full article here: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/may/25/ovarian-cancer-ucsd/
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