A new blood test could detect melanoma at an early stage in more than 80% of patients

Melanoma kills more than 1,700 Australians every year, more than the national road toll. But the good news is treatable if detected early enough. And a new blood test might be able to help a faster and easier diagnosis.

Currently, melanoma is diagnosed by skin examination by trained clinicians. Once a lesion is clbadified as abnormal, a biopsy of the lesion is performed and sent to a pathology laboratory for diagnosis

Most biopsies (75%) will be negative, representing a significant cost to the health system. And biopsies are invasive, requiring excision of the skin under local anesthesia.

Diagnosis is difficult, especially in small, thin melanomas at an early stage; in patients with more than 100 moles; and in cases of amelanotic tumors (which have no color). A blood test before a biopsy could provide diagnostic certainty, especially in high-risk patients.

The New Blood Test

We were looking for ways to detect melanoma by screening patients. some blood. We discovered antibodies produced by the body in response to melanoma, and we discovered that they could be detected in the blood.

Since the body starts to produce these antibodies as soon as the melanoma develops, the blood test is able to detect the cancer at the beginning of its progression.

A total of 1627 different types of antibodies were examined to identify a combination of the ten antibodies that best indicated the presence of melanoma. Using an Oxford Gene Technology Array that allows us to identify proteins such as antibodies, we badyzed the blood of 105 melanoma patients and 104 healthy people, to compare.

We found 139 possible antibodies that were expressed at higher levels in melanoma patients compared to healthy people. Using high-level statistical badysis, we identified a combination of ten autoantibodies (which the body uses to fight disease) that can detect melanoma in patients in the early stages 79% of the time

19659013] Before we can start using these blood tests on patients in the clinic, there are a few steps that we need to take first. While our results were positive in our first series of tests, we need to test more patients to be sure.

We will perform a clinical trial involving 1000 participants, where we will take blood from patients when a doctor ordered a biopsy due to a suspicious lesion. We can compare our test results to the results of the biopsy and we will be able to identify the accuracy of our test and improve its accuracy to 90%, which should be expected from medical diagnostic tests.

we hope to find more, or better, antibodies, which will increase the rate of accuracy.

We hope that this will be completed in three years, and then we will work with a commercial company to obtain a license for a product that can process the tests in the clinics

Hopefully in the not too distant future, when 39 A suspicious lesion is identified in a patient, rather than having to undergo a biopsy, patients can simply undergo a simple blood test.

test would give physicians an additional tool to have more diagnostic certainty before a biopsy. Biopsies would be necessary if a test returned positive.

Many people know that the suspicious lesions found on skin tests mean that they have to undergo a biopsy, and so they can avoid being examined. This test could alleviate patients' concerns about skin checks and enable people in rural and remote areas to obtain earlier and more accessible diagnosis.

Learn more:
Scientists develop "world's first" melanoma blood test