This is a test that could facilitate the diagnosis, screening and monitoring of patients with lung cancer. In Besançon, Dr. Zohair Selmani explains that he and his colleague Alexis Overs have developed a new method to detect specific cancer biomarkers.
“What we developed was to find markers that could be analyzed in the blood,” the professor and hospitalist of oncobiology at the Besançon University Hospital explains to BFMTV.
That is, it is a liquid biopsy analysis. First, the researchers had to define specific signatures of the presence of lung cancer. To do this, “data from about 400 patients were analyzed, with more than 450,000 potential targets each,” says the Besançon University Hospital in a statement.
The researchers then defined six specific markers, three of which they will look for in patients’ blood. “We wanted to select among these 450,000 areas, using a bioinformatic algorithm and artificial intelligence, those that were found in all patients,” explains Zohair Selmani.
Tumor traces are detected in 95% of cases.
The scientists then attempted to validate their results, initially in collaboration with the University Hospital of Dijon and the EPIGENExp technical platform of the University of Franche-Comté.
“We tested them on blood samples from twenty lung cancer patients, compared to twenty healthy donors,” says Zohair Selmani. “In most, if not all, lung cancer patients, we found our targets, while in about twenty healthy people we did not find our markers.” In almost 95% of cases, traces of tumor were detected, specifies the Besançon University Hospital.
In the case of equipment, this minimally invasive blood test could be used, in particular, to complete analyzes or to facilitate the monitoring of cancer patients.
The specialist gives the example of “a patient who has had a CT scan. He has a slightly doubtful lesion but we cannot go and do a biopsy of the lesion. Well, we will take a blood sample and if we find our profile with the markers, which means you have a very high chance of having lung cancer.”
A possible expansion of the technique to other pathologies
But it is in the context of patient monitoring where the method could also help patients and doctors, according to the researchers. In this regard, an evaluation of the test is being carried out in collaboration with the Hospices Civils de Lyon on a cohort of 70 people, representing 1,000 blood samples. According to Professor Léa Payen Gay, these are patients with lung cancer “in different phases of the disease and following different treatments” (radiotherapy, chemotherapy or immunotherapy).
“The idea of this test is clearly, from just one blood test, to be able to clearly identify that the patient has a tumor of lung origin (…) Then we will be able to repeat the analyzes over time to be able to repeat them. to check whether the treatment administered to patients is effective (the biomarker must then disappear from the patient’s blood), this professor of molecular biology of tumors at the Hospices Civils of Lyon explains to BFMTV, “having a more spaced follow-up of the patient is much more . less stressful.”
“On the other hand, if the biomarker remains stable, or even increases, this indicates that the treatment has limited efficacy or is not effective and that it is necessary to consider a change in therapeutic line discussed in a multidisciplinary consultation meeting,” she adds. .
Encouraging results, but still to be confirmed at this stage, in lung cancer, particularly in adenocarcinomas (cancers that develop in glandular cells, editor’s note). Researchers are also working on the use of these tests for other pathologies: “their use could also be extended to other cancers (colon, pancreas, prostate, ovaries),” states the Besançon University Hospital.
Source: BFM TV
