Researchers help develop cancer test

Molly Ball

Tuesday, May 10, 2005 | 10:53 a.m.

Nevada Cancer Institute researchers have helped discover a potential new method for detecting ovarian cancer at a very early stage, a scientific advance that is also a milestone for the nascent research facility.

The scientists, David C. Ward and Patricia Bray-Ward, are among the nine co-authors of a study that will appear in the May 24 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study will be published online this week.

The research has the potential to save women's lives by paving the way for a simple blood test for early-stage ovarian cancer, the study states. Catching cancers early is vital to treating them effectively.

"Early diagnosis of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) would significantly decrease the morbidity and mortality from this disease but is difficult in the absence of physical symptoms," the study says.

"Here, we report a blood test ... that can discriminate between disease free and EOC patients, including patients diagnosed with stage I and II disease, with high efficiency (95 percent)."

That's an impressive percentage, but it is only a first step, David Ward said. The test will have to be refined much more before it becomes an everyday procedure in gynecologists' offices.

"In a blind study of several hundred women, we were able to identify those who did and did not have this cancer with high sensitivity, 95 percent, but that's not high enough for general population screening," Ward said. "We need to increase the sensitivity to 99.6 percent or better."

Within two years, the research team hopes to achieve that goal. The scientists have already been approached by the National Cancer Institute to lead a much larger study of thousands of blood samples, Ward said.

Cancer of the ovaries is relatively common and frequently lethal. According to the study, about 22,000 American women will be diagnosed with it this year, and about 16,000 will die of the disease.

The high mortality, scientists say, stems mostly from the difficulty of detecting the disease -- there is no screening test akin to the Pap smears that indicate cervical cancer. By the time most women experience symptoms, their cancer is in an advanced stage.

The new test works by singling out and measuring four of the hundreds of proteins contained in human blood. If more than one of those four was abnormal, the study found, the patient was likely to have ovarian cancer.

"None of these proteins by themselves are an effective diagnostic," Patricia Bray-Ward said. "You need all four of them."

Making the test even more sensitive will require adding a fifth or sixth marker to the mix, the scientists said. They also believe their research could eventually lead to better tests for breast and other cancers.

Ward and Bray-Ward, who are married, came to the Nevada institute from Yale University within the past year. David Ward, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is the institute's deputy director.

Their work symbolizes the start-up facility's ability to hire top-notch talent and produce results that will have a clear impact for Nevada and the world, Institute President Heather Murren said.

Ovarian cancer "is the subject of interest internationally and nationally, as well as in Nevada," Murren said. "This (research) is the reward for the kind of investment that's been made in us by the community."

The Nevada Cancer Institute has been working for three years to become Nevada's first-ever nationally recognized cancer research and treatment center. It has raised more than $100 million in private donations and loans.

This summer, the institute is scheduled to open its headquarters, a 142,000-square-foot facility in Summerlin.