Exosomes May Hold Key to Pancreatic Cancer Detection

Posted by sandlerkenner on August 14th, 2015

With a five-year survival rate of less than 10 percent, pancreatic cancer has long been considered one of the most deadly forms of the disease. Treatment advancements have been plagued by a failure of medical science to come up with a reliable form of early detection. While cancers, such as breast and prostate benefit from highly reliable forms of early detection, pancreatic cancers often go unnoticed until long after they’ve spread. This, in turn, complicates the prospect of successfully treating the disease.

Researchers have been working for years to tackle the problem of early detection. They may have found it courtesy of tiny particles known as exosomes. These particles may serve as the missing key to enabling doctors to better screen for this disease and diagnose it in its earliest stages.

Researchers have found that exosomes that have a particular surface protein can be detected in very small amounts of blood. This, in turn, leads to a noninvasive test that can distinguish between healthy people and those with pancreatic cancer with 100 percent accuracy, according to a recent study. The findings of the study were published in Nature in June. Furthermore, researchers say they have found the particular marker exosomes present in the blood of patients who ultimately test positive for all stages of pancreatic cancer – even those who are in its earliest stages.

The hope is to turn these findings into a simple blood test that may be used to better screen and detect the disease. How soon such a test might be available remains unknown, but the breakthrough is considered a huge one in relation to a disease that is not known for producing good news.

People who are concerned about pancreatic cancer are urged to speak with their healthcare providers about their potential risks. While early detection protocols are problematic at the present, there are options available to explore risks and screen for the disease if those risks happen to be high.

About Author:-
The Sandler-Kenner Foundation was started by Gregory A. Echt, M.D. and his wife, Susan T. Echt, after they lost two of their dear friends, Michael and Peter, to premature deaths from pancreatic cancer.