Proteins linked to cancer can start appearing in people’s blood more than seven years before they’re diagnosed, research has discovered, meaning the disease could potentially be found and treated earlier.
Two Cancer Research UK-funded studies from Oxford Population Health at the University of Oxford suggested these proteins could be involved at the very earliest stages of cancer.
Intercepting them could give medics a way to stop the disease developing altogether, Cancer Research UK said.
“This research brings us closer to being able to prevent cancer with targeted drugs – once thought impossible but now much more attainable,” said Oxford Population Health senior molecular epidemiologist Dr Karl Smith-Byrne, who worked on both papers.
Both studies, published in Nature Communications on Wednesday, used a technique called proteomics to find important differences in blood samples between people who did and did not go on to develop cancer.
“To be able to prevent cancer, we need to understand the factors driving the earliest stages of its development,” senior author of both studies and OPH senior molecular epidemiologist Professor Ruth Travis said.
“These studies are important because they provide many new clues about the causes and biology of multiple cancers, including insights into what’s happening years before a cancer is diagnosed.
“We now have technology that can look at thousands of proteins across thousands of cancer cases, identifying which proteins have a role in the development of specific cancers, and which might have effects that are common to multiple cancer types.”
In the first study, scientists analysed 44,000 blood samples collected and stored by UK Biobank, including more than 4900 samples from people who were later diagnosed with cancer.
Their analysis of 1463 proteins in each sample revealed 107 that changed at least seven years before a cancer diagnosis and 182 that changed at least three years before a cancer diagnosis.
