Nanotech imaging, molecular fingerprints and signatures hold promise ...( n diagnostic assays a NCI-FDA Clinical...),Health

Arpita I. Mehta, M.S., Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellow and Tufts University Medical Student, identified a subset of proteins produced by ovarian cancer cells that differ in quantity and/or identity from the proteins found in normal healthy ovarian cells. Those proteins mark the presence of ovarian cancer and advance the quest to provide a means to differentiate between early and late stage ovarian cancer in women.

Mehta and colleagues examined proteins and peptides that travel in the blood attached to albumin, a large 'sticky' serum protein that acts as a carrier of bioactive molecules. By comparing the albumin-binding protein profiles from 115 ovarian cancer patients with 127 healthy women, Mehta and colleagues discovered clusters of proteins from cancer patients that differed radically from the protein profile found in healthy women. The results were extremely sensitive and specific. Candidate ovarian cancer diagnostic biomarkers emerged from mass spectrometric analysis of the patients' blood samples, such as proteins characterized at peaks consistent to 3100 or 6900 megahertz.

"The albumin found in blood is a bountiful source of unexplored diagnostic information," Mehta said. "By examining the proteomic pattern of proteins that bind to albumin, we stand to advance our opportunities for precise diagnostics of early stage ovarian cancer in women at high risk and throughout the population in general."

Ovarian cancer is often referred to as a "silent killer" due to lack of symptoms prior to the cancer advancing to a later stage--often stage III. It is the most lethal of gynecological cancers. More than 25,000 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the United States during 2004, and half of those patients will die from the disease within five years. Five-year survival is dramatically increased among women who ar
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Contact: Aimee Frank
amf@spectrumscience.com
202-955-6222
American Association for Cancer Research
28-Mar-2004