{"60398":{"#nid":"60398","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Initial Trials on New Ovarian Cancer Tests Exhibit Extremely High Accuracy","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EScientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have attained very promising results on their initial investigations of a new test for ovarian cancer. Using a new technique involving mass spectrometry of a single drop of blood serum, the test correctly identified women with ovarian cancer in 100 percent of the patients tested. The results can be found online in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, \u0026amp; Prevention Research. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cBecause ovarian cancer is a disease of relatively low prevalence, it\u2019s essential that tests for it be extremely accurate. We believe we may have developed such a test,\u201d said John McDonald, chief research scientist at the Ovarian Cancer Institute (Atlanta) and professor of biology at Georgia Tech.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe measurement step in the test, developed by the research group of Facundo Fernandez, associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Tech, uses a single drop of blood serum, which is vaporized by hot helium plasma. As the molecules from the serum become electrically charged, a mass spectrometer is used to measure their relative abundance. The test looks at the small molecules involved in metabolism that are in the serum, known as metabolites. Machine learning techniques developed by Alex Gray, assistant professor in the College of Computing and the Center for the Study of Systems Biology, were then used to sort the sets of metabolites that were found in cancerous plasma from the ones found in healthy samples. Then, McDonald\u2019s lab mapped the results between the metabolites found in both sets of tissue to discover the biological meaning of these metabolic changes. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe assay did extremely well in initial tests involving 94 subjects. In addition to being able to generate results using only a drop of blood serum, the test proved to be 100 percent accurate in distinguishing sera from women with ovarian cancer from normal controls. In addition it registered neither a single false positive nor a false negative\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe group is currently in the midst of conducting the next set of assays, this time with 500 patients. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cThe caveat is we don\u2019t currently have 500 patients with the same type of ovarian cancer, so we\u2019re going to look at other types of ovarian cancer,\u201d said Fernandez. \u201cIt\u2019s possible that there are also signatures for other cancers, not just ovarian, so we\u2019re also going to be using the same approach to look at other types of cancers. We\u2019ll be working with collaborators in Atlanta and elsewhere.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn addition to having a relatively low prevalence ovarian cancer is also asymptomatic in the early stages. Therefore, if further testing confirms the ability to accurately detect ovarian cancer by analyzing metabolites in the serum of women, doctors will be able detect the disease early and save many lives.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EScientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have attained very promising results on their initial investigations of a new test for ovarian cancer. Using a new technique involving mass spectrometry of a single drop of blood serum, the test correctly identified women with ovarian cancer in 100 percent of the patients tested.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Using a new technique, the test correctly indentified women with ovarian cancer in 100 percent of the patients tested."}],"uid":"27310","created_gmt":"2010-08-11 08:26:17","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:07:15","author":"David Terraso","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2010-08-11T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2010-08-11T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"1183","name":"Home"}],"categories":[{"id":"140","name":"Cancer Research"},{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"}],"keywords":[{"id":"385","name":"cancer"},{"id":"3607","name":"Fernandez"},{"id":"7184","name":"gray"},{"id":"281","name":"mcdonald"},{"id":"387","name":"ovarian"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}