WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - New studies have found that proteins in blood could predict cancer more than seven years before it is diagnosed, sparking hopes for new preventative medication.
During the two studies conducted by the University of Oxford, blood samples of tens of thousands of people were collected from the UK Biobank, which included samples of people with cancer. Data from 300,000 people with cancer was analyzed to determine which proteins were linked to the development of the disease.
Dr Karl Smith-Byrne, senior molecular epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health and an author in both studies, said, 'This research brings us closer to being able to prevent cancer with targeted drugs - once thought impossible but now much more attainable.'
Scientists compared the blood proteins of people with and without cancer diagnosis and identified 618 proteins linked to 19 types of cancer including liver, colon, ovary, lung and breast.
Dr Joshua Atkins, a senior genomic epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health and joint first author of the first study, said: 'The genes we are born with, and the proteins made from them, are hugely influential in how cancer starts and grows. Thanks to the thousands of people who gave blood samples to UK BioBank, we are building a much more comprehensive picture of how genes influence cancer development over many years.'
The study, published in Nature Communications, also found 107 proteins linked to cancers diagnosed more than seven years after the patient's blood sample was collected and 182 proteins that were strongly associated with a cancer diagnosis within three years.
Professor Ruth Travis, a senior molecular epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health and a senior author of both studies, said, 'We now have technology that can look at thousands of proteins across thousands of cancer cases, identifying which proteins have a role in the development of specific cancers, and which might have effects that are common to multiple cancer types.'
Dr Keren Papier, a senior nutritional epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health at the University of Oxford and joint first author of the study, concluded, 'To save more lives from cancer, we need to better understand what happens at the earliest stages of the disease, how the proteins in our blood can affect our risk of cancer. Now we need to study these proteins in depth to see which ones could be reliably used for prevention.'
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