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。之所以这样认为，是因为这种癌症即使在临床检查或更专门的检查发现时，通常已经在整个腹腔广泛扩散，但几乎没有任何症状。患有这种广泛疾病的患者通常在接受诊断后3-5年内死亡。如果发现得足够早，卵巢癌可以通过手术有效治疗，再加上化疗可能会进一步提高治疗成功的机会。正是由于这个原因，能够在卵巢癌发展的早期阶段发现卵巢癌的简单筛选试验有望极大地提高这种疾病患者的生存率。不幸的是，目前还没有一种筛查方法可以在卵巢癌实际存在的时候100%检测出它，同时也能够在没有卵巢癌的情况下100%排除这种疾病。检查的后一项特性尤其重要，因为当检查在这方面不可靠时，没有癌症的患者可能会不恰当地接受旨在确认“癌症阳性”检查结果的侵入性外科手术。在首席研究员的实验室进行的初步研究已经确定了血液中存在的一种化学成分，卵巢癌患者的血液中这种化学成分的含量高于健康人群和其他类型癌症患者。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查血液中这种蛋白质含量的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.