I just saw a very interesting article that highlights how researchers have developed a blood test to look for markers of melanoma DNA in a patient’s blood. The tests take only 48 hours to run (which is a pretty short timeframe), and as we all know, the quicker you can treat melanoma, the better the survival rates.
So what this test does is to identify melanoma DNA in the blood of patients whose cancer is spreading and who lack defects in either BRAF or NRAS genes. (Backstory – mutations in those genes account for more than half of the 50,000 cases of melanoma diagnosed each year in the United States. So those mutations can already be found in existing tests. The new tests help people who do not have the mutations and the cancer is starting to spread…)
What’s really cool is that according to the article, researchers estimate that when their new tests become available for use in clinics, the majority of all melanomas will be detectable. Have a mutation? Great, there was a test already for that. Don’t have a mutation, well now the researchers think they have you covered too.
I’m going to quote directly from the article so I don’t mess up any of the science part…
The new tests monitor blood levels of DNA fragments––known as circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)––that are released into the blood when tumor cells die and break apart, Polsky explained. Specifically, the tests detect evidence of mutations in the chemical “building blocks” of a gene that control telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), a protein that helps cancer cells maintain the physical structure of their chromosomes.
Those TERT mutations are found in other types of cancer, not just melanoma. Which means that these tests may also help other cancer patients who have been undergoing treatment find out much sooner that the treatment (for whatever reason) is no longer controlling the spread of the cancer tumor.