Test Brings Early Pancreatic Cancer to Light

Mar. 23 -- WEDNESDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) -- A light-based test that doesn't focus on the pancreas itself may be the first safe means of accurately spotting early pancreatic cancer in people at high risk for the lethal illness, researchers say.

The screening requires a routine endoscopic biopsy of the duodenum, the upper part of the small intestine. When an early-stage pancreatic cancer is present, cells in the duodenum give off different light-scattering effects than if the disease is not there, U.S. researchers explain in the Aug. 1 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.

In the small pilot study of 51 patients, the optical screen was 100 percent effective in spotting patients with surgically removable pancreatic tumors.

"This is potentially a way of prescreening [high-risk] patients," said lead researcher Vadim Backman, a professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, in Evanston, Ill.

He explained that patients with a family history of pancreatic cancer now "live their whole life thinking, 'What is going to happen to me?'"

He added that the new test raises "a possibility of taking these patients and screening them on an annual basis without risk."

The test, which has already proven useful in detecting early-stage colon cancer using rectal tissue, does need to be validated in a larger, prospective trial, experts said.

However, if that works out, "it would be a very important tool for our patient community, as well as the doctors that treat them," said Julie Fleshman, president and CEO of the nation's largest nonprofit pancreatic cancer advocacy group, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN).

"We look at this with hopeful optimism," she added. "The study was done in a small number of patients, however, so more research needs to be done."

Any advance would be welcome against pancreatic cancer, the fourth leading cancer killer in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, more than 33,000 Americans die annually from the disease, which is especially lethal because it typically shows no symptoms until it has already spread to other organs.