New blood test detects early stage ovarian cancer

image credit: standardmedia.co.ke

Research on a bacterial toxin first discovered in Adelaide has led to the development a new blood test for the early diagnosis of ovarian cancer—a disease which kills over 1000 Australian women and 150,000 globally each year.

The new blood test has the potential to dramatically improve early detection of the disease, although it will require further testing before it is available for clinicians.

A research team from the University of Adelaide and Griffith University have been studying the interactions between the toxin and an abnormal glycan (sugar) expressed on the surface of human cancer cells and released into the blood.

The team has now engineered a harmless portion of the toxin to enhance its specificity for the cancer glycan and used this to detect it in blood samples from women with ovarian cancer.

Blood test cuts time to diagnosis for common, deadly yeast infection, national trial shows

image credit: bbc.com

"A new blood test seems to perform as well as, if not better than, traditional blood cultures at detecting a type of fungal yeast infection that commonly strikes hospital patients, according to an analysis led by UPMC.

The T2Candida Panel is the first diagnostic test for candidemia -- a type of bloodstream infection caused by Candida yeast -- that has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and doesn't require culturing a blood sample from the patient to see what grows. The results of the trial, named DIRECT2, are reported today in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. The trial was funded by T2 Biosystems, the company that makes the panel, which is used by UPMC.

"There are many advantages to quickly diagnosing the specific type of infection a patient has," said lead author Cornelius J. Clancy, M.D., associate professor of medicine in the University of Pittsburgh's Division of Infectious Diseases, and director of the mycology program. "With an accurate diagnosis, we can start the patient on the correct medication for the type of infection he or she has, which will hopefully allow us to stop the infection before it spreads, but also keep us from giving the patient a drug that won't work and potentially contributing to drug resistance. For candidemia, we know that the shorter the time to administering an active antifungal medication to a patient, the higher the survival rate. "

Candidemia is among the four most common bloodstream infections in U.S. hospitals, and Candida are the third most common cause of infections in intensive care units. The mortality rate among patients with candidemia is 40 percent. Blood cultures fail to detect yeast in approximately 50 percent of Candida infections, and typically take two to three days for positive results to be apparent..."

Learn more:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180209174532.htm