Thursday, February 1, 2018

GOOD NEWS, FOR ONCE


The second cutest picture ever taken
Now here is something I consider very good news; almost a “breakthrough”, in fact.
From the very beginning of this blog I have bemoaned the lack of a screening mechanism capable of detecting ovarian cancer at an early stage, when it is most curable.  The Fred Hutch team I endeavored to help was focused on that goal.  We learned some important bio-stuff and published some useful papers – but the test we sought eluded us.  Now, however, success is winking at us just over the hill.
People at Johns Hopkins have succeeded in devising a test involving blood samples that has shown some to positively great success in detecting eight kinds of solid tumors.  From my perspective the best news is that its sensitivity to OVCA is better than 90%!  And its specificity – meaning ability to avoid false positives – also is very high.
The technical details – how they do it – are left unexplained, which is fine because I doubt if I would understand them, anyway.  In brief, they scan for bits of tumor DNA, other bits of certain mutations known to be associated with cancer – as well as eight proteins that somehow are involved.  And all for less than $500, they claim.  At that rate you could do the whole damned country for less than about $150 billion.  Peanuts, these days.
So, there, Kristen, maybe your “simple blood test” is in the offing, at long last.  Of course, “more work needs to be done”, and more grant money provided.  But, I am optimistic. 



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