New test can predict cancer up to 13 years

Vince

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By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor12:00AM BST 01 May 2015

Genetic changes can predict cancer up to 13 years in the future, according to new research.

Harvard and Northwestern University discovered that tiny but significant changes are already happening in the body more than a decade before cancer is diagnosed.

They found that the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, which prevent DNA damage, had significantly more wear and tear in people who went on to develop cancer. In fact, in some cases they looked 15 years older.

Those caps, known as telomeres, were much shorter than they should be and continued to get shorter until around four years before the cancer developed, when they suddenly stopped shrinking. All the people with the changes went on to develop cancer.

"Understanding this pattern of telomere growth may mean it can be a predictive biomarker for cancer," said Dr. Lifang Hou, the lead study author and a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

"Because we saw a strong relationship in the pattern across a wide variety of cancers, with the right testing these procedures could be used to eventually diagnose a wide variety of cancers."
Although many people may not want to know that they will develop cancer in the future, it could allow them to make lifestyle changes to lower their risk. Stanford University is also working on a project looking at how telemores can be regrown.
However insurance companies warned that such a test could push up policy premiums.
Matt Sanders, in charge of protection insurance products at GoCompare, said people with such a diagnoses could be priced out of the insurance marker.
“If this test showed 100 per cent probability over a certain number of years then it could affect premiums. It would be the equivalent of living in a high theft area for someone looking for home insurance,” he said.
“Premiums could rise to a point where some people would simply be priced out. However if it was shown that diagnosing earlier could prevent cancer then that could bring down premiums.”
Aviva also said that continually monitored advances in medical sciences ‘ to ensure they are reflected in the premiums paid by our customers, where appropriate.’
In the new study, scientists took multiple measurements of telomeres over a 13-year period in 792 persons, 135 of whom were eventually diagnosed with different types of cancer, including prostate, skin, lung and leukaemia.
Initially, scientists discovered telomeres aged much faster, indicated by a more rapid loss of length, in individuals who were developing but not yet diagnosed with cancer.
Telomeres in all the people who went on to develop cancer looked as much as 15 years older than those of people who were not developing the disease.
But then scientists found the accelerated aging process stopped three to four years before the cancer diagnosis.
Telomeres shorten every time a cell divides. The older a person is, the more times each cell has divided, and the shorter their telomeres.
Because cancer cells divide and grow rapidly, scientists would expect the cell would get so short it would self-destruct. But that's not what happens, scientists discovered.
“We found cancer has hijacked the telomere shortening in order to flourish in the body,” added Dr Hou.
The team is hoping that if it can identify how cancer hijacks the cell, then treatments could be developed to cause cancer cells to self-destruct without harming healthy cells.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/115...r-up-to-13-years-before-disease-develops.html
 
Wow - very interesting! Especially since it is so often the case that one is only diagnosed with cancer when it is well established and past the best time to treat it...
 
This is very exciting. I had cancer (Lymphoma) two years ago while I designed ExcelMale.com to keep myself sane of mind. It is in remission now but I have to go for check ups once per year. This test would same me time and trouble.


"The hope is that a simple blood draw — far less onerous for patients than a traditional biopsy or a CT scan — will enable oncologists to quickly figure out whether a treatment is working and, if it is, to continue monitoring the treatment in case the cancer develops resistance. Failing treatments could be abandoned quickly, sparing patients grueling side effects and allowing doctors to try alternatives."

New Blood Test Shows Promise in Cancer Fight
 
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[TD="colspan: 2"]A Cancer Breakthrough1Walter Russell Mead's Blogby Damir


Researchers have made what looks like a “once in a generation”breakthrough in fighting cancer, advancing a technique that could become one of the “pillars of oncology,” next to surgery and chemotherapy. The technique enables the immune system, which ordinarily treats malignant cancer cells as if they were healthy, normal cells, to identify and attack tumors.
One of the first drugs developed to exploit this approach, ipilimumab, was approved four years ago and has shown successful results in about 19 percent of cases. But when administered alongside a new drug, nivolumab, the rate of remission shoots up to 58 percent. The Times of London:The drugs are administered through a drip every few weeks and are generally less debilitating than chemotherapy. They do have side-effects, including inflammation, eczema, tiredness and liver problems.
Peter Johnson, the chief clinician at Cancer Research UK, said: “The evidence emerging from clinical trials suggests that we are at the beginning of a whole new era for cancer treatments.”He said that about half the people treated in the trials seemed to have responded well, adding: “We are hoping that in many cases these effects will be maintained in the long term, possibly leading to cures for some . . . this looks like the next big step forward for cancer treatment.”Discoveries like these point to a bright future for medicine. The 21st-century is shaping up to be the century of biology, much like the 19th was the century of chemistry, and the 20th the century of physics. The fusion of information technology and biology is where the breakthroughs are happening. The inner workings of cells are at heart an intricate system for information processing and transmission; science is advancing quite rapidly in both fields. Medical treatments are just one of the many potential applications of this new technology.


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The Times article requires a login. Is this the source paper?
NEJM: Combined Nivolumab and Ipilimumab or Monotherapy in Untreated Melanoma

Although the combo therapy is offering statistically significant improvement over the monotherapy (11.5 vs. 2.9 months), the sobering truth is that this breakthrough is merely less appalling in terms of survival time. Furthermore, these meds are admitted as being inflammatory (which is apparently considered unimportant on the failed somatic theory of cancer, but is probably going to cause new cancers on the metabolic theory - if you live that long).

The SoC (Standard of Care) for most cancers offers precious little life extension, but does assure that you will be miserable and broke.

These advances are sometimes worthwhile. It would be even more interesting to have included a couple of more cohorts in the trial: a group doing KD-R perhaps with exogenous ketones and HBO2 or H2O2 only, and a group doing that with combo.
 

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