Cheap Diagnosis Of Possible Cancers?

Q: I had a friend who recently died of pancreatic cancer, about three months after diagnosis. Since then, I've heard most cases are caught too late to do anything. Isn't there a way to detect this sooner? Today, 80 per cent of those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer already have it in their lymph nodes or beyond. Even for those who have localized disease, fewer than 25 per cent live for five years.

But researchers have made some important breakthroughs. And none is more exciting than the discovery in 2012 of a then-15-year-old high-school student named Jack Andraka. He came up with a test strip (like those used to monitor blood sugar) that's infused with a substance that reacts to a biomarker called mesothelin that's present in your blood or urine when the disease first starts. Dip the strip, which costs 3 cents to make, and see results in five minutes. It will very accurately register positive or negative for pancreatic cancer.

It seems to make early detection/ screening possible; and it works for early, hard-to-diagnose, ovarian and lung cancer, too. Jack has won prizes for this, and if s been widely reported in the media, but we have yet to see it in clinical trials or picked up by a pharmacy company.

Hopefully, that breakthrough can piggyback on a newly developed clinical test to screen for genetic mutations in patients with a family history of pancreatic cancer, and on a potential gene-based test to determine pancreatic cyst type. Ask health questions at doctoroz.com.