Proteins in the blood can provide an early warning of cancer ‘with more than seven years’

Proteins in the blood can warn people of cancer more than seven years before the diagnosis is made research.

Scientists from the University of Oxford studied blood samples from more than 44,000 people in the UK Biobank, including more than 4,900 people who were subsequently diagnosed with cancer.

They compared the proteins of people who were and were not diagnosed with cancer and identified 618 proteins linked to 19 different types of cancer, including colon, lung, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and liver.

The study, funded by Cancer Research UK and published in Nature Communications, also found 107 proteins associated with cancers diagnosed more than seven years after the patient’s blood sample was taken, and 182 proteins strongly associated with a cancer diagnosis within three years .

The authors conclude that some of these proteins could be used to detect cancer much earlier and could potentially provide new treatment options, although further research is needed.

Dr. Keren Papier, a senior nutritional epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health, at the University of Oxford and co-first author of the study, said: “To save more lives from cancer, we need to better understand what happens in the earliest stages of the disease… (and) how the proteins in our blood the cancer can affect our risk of cancer. Now we need to study these proteins in depth to see which ones can be reliably used for prevention.”

A second linked study of genetic data from more than 300,000 cancer cases found 40 proteins in the blood that affected a person’s risk of developing nine different types of cancer. Although altering these proteins can increase or decrease a person’s chance of developing cancer, in some cases it can lead to unintended side effects, the authors found.

Mark Lawler, Professor of Translational Cancer Genomics and Professor of Digital Health at Queen’s University Belfast, said: “The data is impressive – finding evidence of cancer before it has clinically manifested provides a critical ‘window of opportunity’ to treat with a greater risk of cancer. success, or more importantly, to achieve the holy grail of preventing cancer before it can even occur. “There is still more work to be done, but it is an important step forward in a disease that affects one in two British citizens in their lifetime.”

Lawrence Young, professor of molecular oncology at the University of Warwick, said the findings are another step towards identifying markers of increased cancer risk and markers that promote early cancer diagnosis. “Determining protein changes that precede cancer development is not only important in identifying high-risk individuals, but could also provide insight into factors responsible for causing cancer.”

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