The Novel Methylation Blood Test: Colon Cancer Detection Made Easier

The duo new-fangled blood tests might assist in hassle-free, cost-effective and less abhorrent diagnosis of colon and other forms of gastrointestinal cancers.

The scientists from Belgium and Germany behind the development of these tests scrutinized for genetic fingerprinting of tumor formations that might be present in the blood. One test could even aid in forecasting if there is a likelihood of the cancer spreading.

During the joint meeting of the European Cancer Organisation or ECCO and the European Society for Medical Oncology where the tests were illustrated, Mr. Alexander Eggermont, MD, heading the surgical oncology department at the Erasmus University Medical Center, Netherlands elucidated that the tests might aid in filling the requirement for more expedient means of cancer screening.

With the stark statistics of one among seventeen individuals that would get colorectal cancer during the lifetime, makes this disease the second foremost cancer slayer in the United States and Europe.

The mortality chances are lowered when the disease is detected early on, when it could be treated. However, many individuals spurn away from present testing methods like colonoscopy and stool sample diagnosis, dubbing them as invasive or simply too repugnant.

Joost Louwagie, PhD, from the OncoMethylome Sciences, Liege, Belgium who is developing one of the tests, had drawn blood samples from 193 patients that have to go in for surgical invention to treat colorectal cancer and from 688 patients that had to undergo colonoscopy.

The researchers were on the lookout for the genes namely SYNE1 and FOXE1 that have been associated to tumor formations. They detected a major concentration of these genes among colorectal patients, with the same genes occurring uncommonly among those patients without cancer.

On the whole, the test accurately detected fifty to sixty percent cancer cases and precisely detected greater than ninety percent of individuals with no cancer. The researchers pointed out that the test performed even better in those persons with preliminary stage of colon cancer.

As soon as it gains validation, the novel methylation test could be useful in as a non-invasive means of cancer screening choice in those patients that refuse or don’t have access to colonoscopy or don’t want to undergo the fecal occult blood testing.

The blood sample could be drawn by staffs that do not need high specialisation which leads to greater rates of patient conformity.

The second test that was created by Ulrike Stein, PhD, from the ECRC Charite University of Medicine, Berlin, and his associates looked for cancers of the colon, rectum or gastric-related. The test is based on the genetic fingerprinting, S100A4, that has been associated to the tumors developing and proliferating.

The scientists reviewed day-to-day samples taken from 185 persons having colon cancer, 190 persons having rectal cancer, 51 patients with gastric cancer and 51 healthy candidates. The researchers detected that the gene S100A4 was noted in majorly elevated levels in the set of cancer patients irrespective of which form of cancer they had, than in the healthy control group. These levels were noted to be even greater in those patients in whom the cancer had proliferated.

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