A blood test that could save men from painful biopsies to test for prostate cancer has been developed by researchers.
The ‘liquid biopsy’ looks for prostate cancer-specific changes to the DNA in blood and aims to provide a more accurate way of determining if a patient has prostate cancer and whether a tumour is benign or aggressive.
Every year approximately 200,000 men have a biopsy — which involves inserting a needle in the rectum or perineum to take small samples of tissue from the prostate gland – after a prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood test has revealed higher than expected levels of protein.
However, the PSA test can often be inaccurate and approximately three quarters of men who are diagnosed with raised PSA do not have prostate cancer.
BRC supported Dr Andy Feber, one of the research team, said: “We want to try to find a better way of identifying men who really do have cancer. We are not trying to replace biopsies but we are looking to reduce the number of men who need an invasive and potentially unnecessary biopsy.”
The test seeks to identify chemical changes of DNA, which appear after a cell becomes cancerous, rather than changes or mutations in DNA code. The pattern of these changes, known as epigenetic modifications, is specific to each cell and organ in the body. As a result, the changes reveal whether the DNA is from the prostate or another organ, whether it is normal DNA or cancer DNA and if the cancer is aggressive.
Dr Iain Frame, Director of Research at Prostate Cancer UK, said: “The quest for better and more reliable prostate cancer diagnostic tests has long been a challenge for researchers. Finding a more sophisticated blood test, or ‘liquid biopsy’, is one of the most promising areas of prostate cancer research. If successful, Dr Feber’s work could offer a much quicker, cheaper and less invasive test, while saving thousands of men from unnecessary biopsies and catching cases of deadly cancer sooner.”
The team, who have been awarded 334,000 by Prostate Cancer UK and the Movember Foundation, hope the next step will be a large clinical trial, which could lead to the new test being introduced within five years.
