Washington: A team of researchers at the University of Michigan has found a novel way of diagnosing and treating pancreatic cancer.

They have been able to distinguish the genes involved in cancer from those involved in a chronic inflammatory disease pancreatitis, which is often mistaken for cancer. The team reports finding 158 genes specific to pancreatic cancer.

This is said to be a major breakthrough as far as diagnosing cancer is concerned. Till now diagnosis took a few weeks, in some cases months, and even then only about 20 per cent could be diagnosed. Then followed an arduous operation, after which the patients could live a maximum of five years.

The researchers conducted two studies, which zeroed in on the genes and proteins that help pancreatic cancer grow and spread. They used tissue samples that had been swiftly processed after being removed from patients, to preserve fragile molecules that act as telltale signatures for genes that are "turned on" or expressed.

The findings were published on May 15 in a new paper in the journal 'Cancer Research'. The results will be more applicable to making specific diagnostic tests and effective treatments. The findings claimed identifying and detecting four proteins - 14-3-3-sigma, S100P, S100A6, Beta-4 integrin - that are encoded by the cancer-specific genes.

The findings are based on tissue from 10 pancreatic tumors, five samples from pancreatitis patients and five samples of normal pancreas, as well as seven commercially available pancreatic cancer cell lines. The researchers screened all the cell types for expression of more than 6,800 genes, and focused in on those expressed more often in cancer cells.

ANI