Metastasis Blood Test Possible

Here is some more science on thecancer front and it appears to be a way of independently evaluating the risk ofmetastasis of the known cancer.  This allhelps tighten the clinical information available to plan treatment.

I am now seeing a rising tide ofeffective treatment protocols and I believe now that cancer can be cured if thescience is given a free hand to finish the job. It should switch over to a rush basis with patients been asked to signoff on methods that are timely for them but impossible for preliminaryconformation in the patients lifetime.

Intercepting cancer is worth alot of risk, even if it entails a protocol with a mere five percent success, aslong as success is possible.  Allprotocols are usually well past that lousy threshold.

The problem is more the slow conversiononto new protocols by the research community. A whole range of age tested herbal remedies were opposed in the Eighties,tested by university labs without industry support in the nineties and aregenerally understood and accepted today. Thus a promising discovery today with no obvious pathway to patentprotection is advanced far too slowly by resource strapped grad students.

I can tell you that cancer wasmost likely cured (MIT nanogold experiment) two years ago.  I can not tell you when if ever we can saveyour life.

Blood Test Could PredictMetastasis Risk in Melanoma

Released: 4/13/2011 11:30 AM EDT 

Embargo expired: 4/15/2011 12:05 AM EDT

Source: AmericanAssociation for Cancer Research (AACR)

Newswise — PHILADELPHIA — Scientists at Yale University have identifieda set of plasma biomarkers that could reasonably predict the risk of metastasisamong patients with melanoma, according to findings published in ClinicalCancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

“The rate at which melanoma is increasing is dramatic, and there is ahuge number of patients under surveillance,” said Harriet Kluger, M.D.,associate professor of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. “Ourcurrent method of surveillance includes periodic imaging, which creates hugesocietal costs.”

Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in men and the seventh mostcommon cancer in women. It is estimated that 68,130 people in the United Stateswere diagnosed in 2010, and 8,700 died. With proper screening, melanoma canoften be caught early enough to be removed with surgery, and mortalitytypically comes when the cancer metastasizes. The risk of metastasis variesfrom less than 10 percent for those with stage 1A melanoma, to as high as 70percent with stage 3C.

Patients with melanoma are typically subjected to a combination ofimaging tests, blood tests and physical examinations, but there is no clearconsensus on how often these tests should occur or how reliable they are.

Kluger and colleagues tested the plasma of 216 individuals, including108 patients with metastatic melanoma and 108 patients with stage 1 or 2disease. They identified seven plasma biomarkers: CEACAM, ICAM-1, osteopontin,MIA, GDF-15, TIMP-1 and S100B.

All of these biomarkers were higher in patients with metastaticmelanoma than patients with early-stage disease. In fact, 76 percent ofpatients with early-stage disease had no elevations at all whereas 83 percentof metastatic patients had elevations of at least one marker. Researcherscalculated that the area under the curve, a measure of the test’s reliability,was 0.898. Area under the curve calculations rate from .5 to 1, with 1 beingoptimal and .5 being useless.

“This finding will need to be confirmed prospectively before it is usedin the clinic, but it shows that such testing is possible,” said Kluger.