A New Biomarker for Ovarian Cancer Detection

描述(申请人提供)：卵巢癌是女性生殖道最致命的恶性疾病。这被认为是因为这种癌症即使有症状，也很少，尽管在临床检查或更专门的测试中可以发现它时，它通常已经广泛扩散到整个腹腔。患有这种广泛疾病的患者通常在收到诊断后3-5年内死亡。如果及早发现，卵巢癌可以通过手术有效地治疗，加上化疗可能会进一步提高成功治疗的机会。正是出于这个原因，能够在卵巢癌发展的早期阶段发现卵巢癌的简单筛查测试，有望极大地提高这种疾病患者的存活率。不幸的是，目前还没有可用的筛查测试可以100%地发现卵巢癌，同时也能够在100%没有卵巢癌的情况下排除这种疾病。这项测试的后一种特性尤其重要，因为当测试在这方面不可靠时，非癌症患者可能会不适当地接受侵入性外科手术，以确认“癌症阳性”的测试结果。在首席研究员的实验室进行的初步研究发现，血液中存在一种化学成分，卵巢癌患者的血液中这种化学成分的水平高于健康人和其他癌症患者。这些结果强烈表明，这种新发现的标记物，可能是一种从肿瘤中释放出来的蛋白质，可能具有正确诊断卵巢癌的能力。在这项拨款提案中，我们描述了进一步的研究，这些研究将更详细地检验血液中这种蛋白质的含量测试是否能够正确诊断卵巢癌的存在。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant):Ovarian cancer is the most lethal malignant disease of the female genital tract. This is thought to be the case because this cancer exhibits few, if any, symptoms even though it has usually spread extensively throughout the abdominal cavity by the time it is detectable by clinical examination or more specialized tests. Patients with such extensive disease typically die within 3-5 years of receiving their diagnosis. If detected early enough, ovarian cancer is effectively treated by surgery, and the addition of chemotherapy may further improve the chances of successful treatment. It is for this reason that simple screening tests, able to detect ovarian cancer at early stages in its development, are expected to tremendously improve the survival of patients with this disease. Unfortunately, there are currently no screening tests available that can detect ovarian cancer 100% of the time when it is actually present, while also being able to rule out the disease in 100% of the cases in which it is actually absent. This latter property of the test is especially important because when the test is not reliable in this regard, patients without cancer may be inappropriately subjected to an invasive surgical procedure intended to confirm the 'cancer-positive' test result.Preliminary research done in the laboratory of the principal investigator has identified a chemical constituent present in the blood, which is found at higher levels in patients with ovarian cancer than in healthy people and people with other kinds of cancer. These results strongly suggested that this newly discovered marker, which is a protein likely released from the tumor, may have the ability to correctly diagnose ovarian cancer.In this grant proposal, we describe further studies, which will examine in greater detail, the ability of a test for the amount of this protein in blood to correctly diagnose the presence of ovarian cancer.