Somerville, N.J. (Ivanhoe Newswire)— One hundred forty-eight thousand Americans are diagnosed every year with colorectal cancer. In up to 40 percent of those patients, the cancer will come back after treatment. Now, a simple blood test, Signatera, done at home can give doctors an early idea if cancer will recur up to a year before other diagnostic tests would catch the spreading cells of cancer recurrence.
When Scott Jones got winded walking around his house, he assumed it was his age or his heart. Instead, doctors diagnosed the 58-year old with colon cancer.
“They said it was an aggressive form of cancer,” Jones recalled.
Scott was no stranger to cancer; before the colon cancer diagnosis he had 14 cases of skin cancer.
“I’ve had over a hundred stitches in my face and you really can’t see,” Jones shared.
Two weeks after his colon cancer diagnosis, Scott’s doctor removed a golf ball sized tumor and part of his colon. Then doctors added something new. A phlebotomist visits Scott at home to draw blood for a test called Signatera. It detects cancer cells that might have been left behind.
“When somebody has a tumor and the tumors spread, obviously they are circulating in their bloodstream,” explained Thangamani Seenivasan, MD, a surgical oncologist at Somerset Surgical Associates.
Scott’s blood is checked for circulating tumor DNA, the mutations found in each patient’s individual tumor. Researchers say the test can detect cancer recurrence up to one year before other tests and can help doctors tell if a cancer therapy is working.
“If for some reason, the circulating tumor DNA is persistent. It also tells us probably this is not the effective treatment,” elaborated Dr. Seenivasan.
After years of battling cancer, for Scott, the earlier doctors catch rogue cells the better.
“Now there’s another tool to hopefully keep me free and clear going down the road,” shared Jones.
In addition to colon cancer, the Signatera test is used in non-small cell lung cancer, breast, and bladder cancers. Earlier this year, Medicare approved covering Signatera for patients with stage two and three colorectal cancer.
Contributors to this news report include: Cyndy McGrath, Executive Producer & Field Producer; Kirk Manson, Videographer; Roque Correa, Editor.
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Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868559/
MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS
RESEARCH SUMMARY
TOPIC: SIGNATERA: PERSONALIZED BLOOD TEST DETECTS CANCER RECURRENCE
REPORT: MB #4830
BACKGROUND: Cancer starts when cells grow out of control and crowd out normal cells. This makes it hard for your body to work the way it should. Cancer can develop anywhere in the body. It can start in the lungs, the breast, the colon, or even in the blood. Cancers are alike in some ways, but they are different in the ways they grow and spread. Most cancers form a lump called a tumor or a growth. But not all lumps are cancer. Doctors take out a piece of the lump, known as a biopsy, and look at it to find out if it’s cancer. Lumps that are not cancer are called benign, and lumps that are cancer are called malignant. Some cancers, like leukemia, don’t form tumors. They grow in the blood cells or other cells of the body.
(Source: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/what-is-cancer.html)
CANCER RECURRENCE: If cancer is found after treatment, and after a period when the cancer couldn’t be detected, it’s called a cancer recurrence. The recurrent cancer may come back in the same place it started or come back somewhere else in the body. When it spreads to a new part of the body, it’s still named after the part of the body where it started. If it is found after you have been treated for one type of cancer, tests will be done to see if the cancer is the same type you had before or a new type. It’s not possible to predict how likely a cancer is to recur, but cancer is harder to treat and more likely to come back if it is fast growing, or more advanced or widespread. The three types of recurrence are local, regional, and distant recurrence.
BREAKTHROUGH OFFERS HOPE: According to a study led by The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, a new treatment for breast cancer patients with hormone receptor (HR+) early stage disease who are at a high risk of recurrence has been shown to reduce the risk by 25%. The global randomized Phase III study with 5,637 patients in 38 countries tested if patients taking the CDK 4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib, along with hormone therapy following standard of care treatments, would reduce the risk of recurrence compared with the standard hormone treatment alone. The study found a 25% reduction in recurrence of cancer when abemaciclib was added to the standard hormone therapy compared to the hormone therapy alone for two years. During this time 11.3% of patients in the control group had a relapse of their cancer compared with 7.8% of those in the abemaciclib group.
(Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/trmn-2r092020.php)
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS REPORT, PLEASE CONTACT:
KEVIN KNIGHT
206-451-4823
If this story or any other Ivanhoe story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Marjorie Bekaert Thomas at mthomas@ivanhoe.com
