For the vast majority of pancreatic cancer cases, the tumor grows undetected until it has already spread locally or to distant parts of the body. That means most patients, over 80% by some estimates, are diagnosed when it’s already too late to do surgery — depriving them of their best chance for a cure.
“For the majority of patients, we cannot resect the tumor. That’s why we have such a high degree of mortality,” said Ajay Goel, a cancer researcher at the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope. The key to saving more lives from pancreatic cancer will not just be from improving treatment but by discovering a better way to discover the cancer earlier, Goel said, and he’s getting closer to developing a new blood test that might do just that.
At the American Association of Cancer Research annual meeting on Monday, Goel presented early data on the test, which looks for bits of RNA discharged by tumors, suggesting it might be able to detect pancreatic cancer at stage 1 or 2 with a sensitivity of over 90%.