Stool test for colon cancer reported by Kimmel Cancer Center at Joh...( Scientists at the Sidney Kimmel Compre...)

Scientists at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins* have developed a safe and reliable stool test that can detect the earliest, curable stages of colon cancer. Early studies of the test, which uses a newly developed technology to detect and highlight a key genetic marker of the disease, are reported in the January 31, 2002, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, and are the culmination of more than a decade of effort to uncover disease mutations and apply them to screening and early detection.

In the current research, the investigators analyzed stool samples collected from 74 individuals, including 28 with early colon cancers, 18 with premalignant colon tumors called adenomas and 28 with no disease. The test detected a telltale genetic mutation in 61 percent, of those with early colon cancer, half of those with premalignant adenomas and in none of those who were disease-free. The findings demonstrate that the test reliably detects cancers at an early and curable stage, and that it yielded no false positives.

"We still have a way to go before we can confidently use such a screening test in the general population, but we are encouraged by the fact that we've detected mutations in a significant fraction of the patients with early stage tumors and never in people free of disease," says Kenneth Kinzler, Ph.D., professor of oncology at the Kimmel Cancer Center*. The investigators expect it will take an additional three to five years before the test will be available clinically.

The new test is believed to be the first to reproducibly and reliably pinpoint colon cancer-linked APC gene mutations in DNA shed into feces. First identified in 1991 by research teams led by Bert Vogelstein, M.D., Kinzler, and other scientists, APC mutations initiate the cascade of molecular and cellular errors that eventually result in tumor formation. Though the Hopkins team has always expected this early colon cancer marker was
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Contact: Vanessa Wasta
wastava@jhmi.edu
410-955-1287
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
30-Jan-2002