Blood tests could one day help diagnose skin cancer

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-04-20 17:01

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Blood tests could eventually replace skin biopsies to look for signs of melanoma, according to international researchers. The team developed a testing platform they say can detect the presence of melanoma cells circulating in the blood, and determine whether all cells have been removed after skin cancer surgery. The researchers say this could one day reduce the need for more invasive testing.

News release

From: Wiley

Can a blood test help diagnose skin cancer?

New research in Advanced NanoBiomed Research indicates that testing an individual’s blood can reveal the presence of circulating melanoma cells. Such tests may allow patients to forego invasive skin biopsies to determine whether they have skin cancer.

The test uses what’s called the Melanoma-specific OncoBean platform conjugated with melanoma-specific antibodies. Investigators at the University of Michigan showed that the test can be used not only to diagnose melanoma but also to evaluate whether all cancer cells have been successfully removed after skin cancer surgery.

"This is the first comprehensive study of circulating tumor cells—or CTCs—to evaluate the efficacy of surgery using microfluidic systems in melanoma, including changes in the number of CTCs, CTC cluster configuration, and gene expression profiling,” said first author, Yoon-Tae Kang, PhD. “CTCs have the potential to pinpoint treatment resistance and recurrence, and can be a valuable biomarker to non-invasively monitor for disease progression,” added corresponding author Sunitha Nagrath, PhD.

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Journal/
conference: Advanced NanoBiomed Research

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Michigan, USA

Funder: The authors acknowledge the financial support of the University of Michigan College of Engineering and NSF grant #DMR- 0320740, and technical support from the Michigan Center for Materials Characterization. This work was supported by grants from National Institute of Health (NIH), 5-R33-CA-202867-02 to S.N., and 1-R01-CA- 208335-01-A1 to S.N.

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