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Less Invasive Colon Cancer Detection Technique

Many people avoid getting screened for colon cancer because the best detection method, the colonoscopy, can be uncomfortable. Scientists are inching toward a less invasive technique, a simple blood test, that might eventually make early detection quicker and easier.

Your immune system has an extraordinary power. researchers hope to harness the body's ability to detect colon cancer and use it to diagnose it.

"What is the immune system seeing? The immune system has to see something foreign, something out of the ordinary. And what is it that they're recognizing on the cancer? And we call these cancer tumor antigens," said Matthew Scanlan, Ph.D.

A study at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center compared blood samples from 75 colon cancer patients to 75 healthy adults. Researchers identified 13 specific antigens that only the cancer patients had.

"And then we found that about half the colon cancer patients have antibodies to these things, and the other half, we still have to identify more antigens... to cover the rest," said Dr. Scanlan.

Current tests to detect prostate and ovarian cancer look for specific individual antigens in the blood. This new approach measures how antibodies react to several antigens at once.

"There's other markers that we can't even see, that we don't, we don't have the test available to detect them yet. But your body can detect them, and then we can exploit the body's own ability to detect them and use that as a test," said Dr. Scanlan.

The research is in its earliest stage -scientists need to discover more antigens and do more testing. This type of colon cancer test may be available within a decade.

Dr. Scanlan says this area of research began by looking for targets for immunotherapy - ways to enhance the body's ability to recognize and fight its own cancers. He expects these studies might eventually lead to both a new diagnostic test and new anti-cancer drugs or vaccines for colon cancer.

For general information on colorectal cancer, call 800-4-CANCER.

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