Discovery of a new, reliable, sensitive and easy to handle blood test for the diagnostic, prognostic and treatment of cancer
With the growing number of cancer cases being diagnosed worldwide and the persisting high number of deaths due to late disease discovery, the identification of new cancer biomarkers for both early detection and targeted therapeutic interventions is believed to be crucial both for cancer prevention and better outcome in treated cancer patients. Cancer is the second- highest cause of death worldwide, with lung, colon, breast (female), pancreas and prostate (males) cancers being most common.
Currently, the most important cancer diagnostic and prognostic indicators are based on the morphological and histological characteristics of tumors, as there are no available blood biomarkers with sufficient sensitivit y and specificity for diagnosis, and only a few biomarkers exist for monitoring and prognosis evaluation of cancer.
A major challenge in harnessing the potential of biomarkers in oncology is that cancer initiation and promotion and tumor progression are complex processes involving several abnormal genetic and epigenetic molecular events and cellular interactions. Consequently, malignant transformation leads to specific and non-specific phenotypic cell signature changes, hence to the clonal selection and progression of cancer cells in the organism. Moreover cancer may result from exposure to multiple and diverse environmental carcinogenic agents, such as chemicals, radiation and microorganisms; especially in genetically susceptible hosts (Belpomme et al,The multitude and diversity of environmental carcinogens, Environ Res.2007 Nov;105(3):414-29; Irigaray and Belpomme, Basic properties and molecular mechanisms of exogenous chemical carcinogens, Carcinogenesis.2010 Feb;31(2):135-48). As a consequence of these multiple and diverse exposures and the complexity of carcinogenic processes, tu mors vary widely in etiology and pathogenesis, so cancer consists of more than 200 distinct diseases affecting over 60 human organs.
The present invention reconciles these complexities, by providing a new single biomarker that allows the detection of metabolically active cancer of many types, through a simple measurement in biological samples of the patient / subject.
Researchers have shown here for the first time that increased levels of BM2607/05 in biological samples of cancer-bearing subjects are highly positively correlated with the development and progression of cancer metabolically active; highlighting that cancer cells produce and release significantly higher amounts of BM2607/05 than normal cells in the tumor as well as in extracellular fluids in the organism, and that it is possible to obtain a reliable and sensitive diagnosis / prognosis test of cancer from a unique blood sample. The present invention therefore relates to an in vitro method for early detection and diagnosis of cancer and for prognosis assessment, monitoring and therapeutic decision-making in cancer-bearing subjects by measuring the presence of BM2607/05.
The Figure above shows the significant positive correlation between blood levels of BM 2607/05 and tumor stages in patients with cancer. Whatever the stage of the cancer, most BM 2607/05 blood level values are above the normal control value of 0.06 µ M (p=0.0109), showing that systematic measurement of BM 2607/05 in the blood is an efficient tool for diagnosing cancer, critically enabling early detection and screening.