One of the deadliest forms of cancer is biliary tract cancer. Only one in three patients diagnosed with the disease is operable. The rest must settle for life-sustaining treatment.
The reason why this cancer is so deadly is that it is difficult to diagnose, and therefore, most patients are not diagnosed with the disease until after the cancer has had time to spread.
Nevertheless, new research from the University of Copenhagen can pave the way for early detection of biliary tract cancer and other serious cancers.
“Our study shows that biliary tract cancer causes the immune cells to change behaviour, resulting in a unique expression of microRNA molecules in the patient’s blood. These changes enable us to diagnose biliary tract cancer much earlier than with existing tests,” says Associate Professor Jesper Bøje Andersen. He is head of the group of researchers from the Biotech Research & Innovation Centre at the University of Copenhagen who are responsible for the new study.
“Sometimes tumours, including the ones you find in the biliary tract, differ considerably, and developing a comprehensive measure for these tumours can therefore be difficult. But one thing all cancers have in common is the fact that they affect the immune system,” says PhD Dan Høgdall, who is first author of the study and a doctor at the Department of Oncology at Herlev and Gentofte Hospital. He adds:
“We need to focus attention on how cancer affects the body as a whole instead of focussing solely on the cancer cells. Among other things, such a broad approach has paved the way for brand new treatments involving immunotherapy, which is targeted at the immune cells instead of the cancer cells. Adopting a broad approach can also provide us with important knowledge about early diagnostics.”
Cancer causes the immune cells to change behaviour
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