2019 Annual Report

New combination blood test for pancreatic cancer
may catch disease earlier
Clues in the blood may help catch pancreatic cancer
sooner, giving people battling this deadly disease a
better chance at remission.
A team led by Dr. Brian Haab has developed a new,
simple blood test that, when combined with an existing
test, detects nearly 70% of pancreatic cancers with
a less than 5% false-positive rate. If successful in
additional clinical evaluation, this new combination
approach could give doctors a powerful new tool for
screening people at high risk for pancreatic cancer and
increase the chances that it’s caught in its earlier and
more treatable stages.
“Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive disease made even
more devastating by its tendency to spread before
detection, which is a serious roadblock to successful
medical treatment,” Haab said. “We hope that our new
method will help doctors catch and treat pancreatic
cancer before this happens.”
Pancreatic cancer is difficult to diagnose because it
often doesn’t have obvious early symptoms. By the
time the disease is found, it typically is quite advanced,
complicating treatment and leading to poorer
outcomes. Only 8.5% of people with pancreatic cancer
survive past five years, a figure that has only risen
slightly since the early 1990s.
Both Haab’s new test and the existing test detect
and measure levels of sugars produced by pancreatic
cancer cells that subsequently escape into the blood
stream. The sugar measured by the new test — sTRA —
is produced by a different subset of pancreatic cancers
than CA-19-9, the sugar measured by the existing test.
When used together, the tests cast a broader net and
detect subtypes of pancreatic cancer that may have
been missed by using one of the two tests on its own.
“We believe using these tests in a complementary
fashion will help physicians detect pancreatic cancers
much sooner in the disease process, which significantly
improves a patient’s chance for survival,” Haab said.
“Right now, there are few options for people suspected
to have pancreatic cancer. This combined blood test
could be a simple, cost-effective way to detect disease
early enough to save lives.”
In late 2019, the test began undergoing additional realworld
validation in clinical labs at Spectrum Health. If
successful as expected, Haab and his team envision the
test becoming widely available as a screening tool for
high-risk individuals.
Research reported in this publication was supported by
the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes
of Health under award numbers U01CA152653,
U01CA200466, U01CA200468, U01CA168896,
U01CA196403 and P30CA138313. The content is solely
the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily
represent the official views of the National Institutes of
Health.
“Pancreatic cancer is an
aggressive disease made even
more devastating by its tendency
to spread before detection,
which is a serious roadblock to
successful medical treatment.
We hope that our new method
will help doctors catch and treat
pancreatic cancer before
this happens.”
— DR. BRIAN HAAB
6 | VAN ANDEL INSTITUTE ANNUAL REPORT 2019