New pancreatic cancer test could increase survival rates to 60%
Written by News on 25/09/2019
The world’s first urine test which detects early stage pancreatic cancer could increase longer-term survival rates from 5% to 60% if successfully rolled out, the professor who developed it says.
The simple test, developed by Professor Tatjana Crnogorac-Jurcevic of Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, has reached the final stage of validation before being developed for use with patients.
Nearly 10,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year in the UK, but only around five in every 100 patients will live for five years or more beyond their diagnosis.
This is the lowest survival rate of any common cancer and is partly due to late diagnosis – more than 85% of patients are diagnosed too late for surgery, limiting their treatment options.
Professor Crnogorac-Jurcevic said: “We’ve been working on this biomarker research for over 10 years and I’m excited to reach this stage.
She added: “If we can detect pancreatic cancer when it’s still operable and when the tumours are small and not yet spread to other organs, we could see a significant impact on patient survival; removing tumours that are 1cm or smaller can increase five-year survival to around 60%.”
The test works by measuring levels of three specific proteins found in urine that were identified by Professor Crnogorac Jurcevic as biomarkers of early stage pancreatic cancer.
The biomarkers will now be tested in a £1.6m clinical study of more than 3,000 people, funded by medical research charity Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund (PCRF).
If the accuracy of the test is confirmed, a standardised urine test will be developed for clinicians to use during diagnoses.
Claire Chiles died from pancreatic cancer in May 2015, after waiting five years for a diagnosis.
Her husband Will believes his wife could have had a chance to survive if the urine test had been available.
“We’re not quite sure, but the bottom line is she may well have had a chance,” he said.
But he added the the circumstances meant “she didn’t have a chance, it was a death certificate basically because she only got diagnosed five weeks before she died”.
“She had no chance, she didn’t even have a chance to get chemotherapy, so it could mean the difference between life and death.”
He added: “Something like this comes through, if it means somebody’s odds are better to live, to survive, then it’s a no-brainer.
“Whereas from our perspective we just didn’t know. And when we did know, it was just too late.”
(c) Sky News 2019: New pancreatic cancer test could increase survival rates to 60%
