Funding from PanKind supports important research into a pioneering blood test for the early detection of pancreatic cancer, which could revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of this deadly disease in Australia. Pancreatic cancer is one of Australia's biggest killers, with poor survival rates due to a lack of clear symptoms and the necessary screening tools to detect the early stages of the disease.
The medical community hopes the test will accurately identify patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer for the first time - a key step towards improving patients' survival rates and quality of life.
A project to develop a blood-based test to identify patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer has received funding from PanKind.
The test is based on an important discovery by the World Health Organization (WEHI) that it can identify proteins in patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer. Currently, there are no early detection biomarkers for this disease.
The researchers hope that the test will be used by GPs and oncologists as an early intervention tool in the future to provide patients with more effective treatment options.
The threat of pancreatic cancer is growing
Pancreatic cancer is expected to be Australia's fourth leading cancer killer this year, with 3,600 people expected to die from the disease.
Because pancreatic cancer lacks specific symptoms in its early stages, it is often diagnosed late, meaning most patients are diagnosed when the cancer has spread and begun to affect nearby organs.
Leadership and Innovation
Project leader Dr Belinda Lee said the new funding will help the team translate their findings into diagnostic tests that will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Australia and around the world.
Dr. Li, Medical Oncology Consultant at WEHI, said: "There are currently no biomarkers for early detection of pancreatic cancer, and this situation urgently needs to change. We discovered 13 proteins that can differentiate between early and late stages of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most common type of pancreatic cancer that is rapidly becoming the cancer of our generation. While 5-year survival rates have improved for most other cancers, PDAC is increasing in incidence and mortality, and is expected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related death by 2030."
"Even when pancreatic cancer is diagnosed, there are no biomarkers to guide clinical decisions, meaning clinicians have limited opportunities to ensure the correct and optimal treatment for patients. We hope to validate these proteins and show that they can be used to reliably screen for early-stage pancreatic cancer. This will allow us to create the first diagnostic test to identify patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer - unfortunately, no such test currently exists."
important data
To achieve this goal, researchers will utilize the global PURPLE pancreatic cancer translational registry established by Dr. Li in 2016 with philanthropic support from WEHI, which also helped the research team identify 13 key proteins.
The registry is a large database tracking the treatment journey of patients at 48 cancer centers in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, and currently has more than 4,000 patients and more than 2,000 biological samples.
Data from the registry confirm that 70% of patients are in advanced stages, highlighting the need for biomarkers to detect the disease earlier.
research and development
"We will use state-of-the-art technology and computational methods to compare protein signatures in the blood of healthy people with those of patients with early and late-stage pancreatic cancer," said Dr. Li. "These results will allow us to identify potential new blood-based biomarkers and further develop a simple, non-invasive screening test to identify early-stage pancreatic cancer. It is hoped that this test can be used by GPs to identify patients with the disease, or by oncologists to determine the correct treatment for patients. The ultimate goal is that this silent cancer can be diagnosed earlier through this tool, thereby increasing the number of patients who go into remission, helping us to triple survival rates by 2030."
The project, titled "Developing a blood-based test to identify patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer," is supported by PanKind's $100,000 Marianne Allen Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund.
Compiled source: ScitechDaily