Detecting cancer’s earliest warning signals
At Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, our mission is to eliminate cancer and related diseases as causes of human suffering and death. Traditionally, the fight against cancer has been focused on the discovery of new treatments, including drugs, for patients with advanced disease. This approach has led to many medical breakthroughs, such as our own institution’s pioneering achievements in bone-marrow and stem-cell transplantation and the use of antibodies for targeting radiation or chemotherapy to cancer cells. Both techniques have dramatically improved survival rates for patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases, in some cases boosting survival rates from nearly zero to greater than 80 percent.
For many common cancers, though — such as those affecting the breast, lung or colon — overall cancer-survival rates have not achieved similarly impressive leaps over the past 30 years. Yet a more careful look at the numbers reveals a striking pattern: Survival rates are dramatically better for those cases in which the disease was found and treated while still at an early stage, before the cancer has spread from the organ of origin to other parts of the body. For example, five-year survival rates for breast- and prostate-cancer patients with localized, early stage disease are greater than 95 percent. In contrast, when cancer has spread to distant parts in the body, five-year survival rates for breast cancer are 22 percent and for prostate cancer, 33 percent. Those whose disease is detected when it has spread to nearby organs fare better, but still do not have survival rates comparable to patients with very early stage diagnoses.
These statistics have encouraged us to explore another promising area of cancer research that involves identifying molecular clues in the blood. These molecular “signatures” will enable us to diagnose cancer earlier, develop targeted therapies to treat cancers of all stages more effectively and with fewer side effects, and monitor a patient’s response to treatment. Our approach is to develop sensitive tests that reveal the presence, type and aggressiveness of cancers by detecting the unique set of proteins released into the blood by tumors. Our discoveries of these signatures will not only help us diagnose cancers at earlier — and more treatable — stages, they also will enable us to create new drugs and other therapies aimed precisely at a particular form of disease and to test whether a patient is responding to treatment. Our scientists already have successfully used this approach to design tests that predict relapse in leukemia patients more than a year before they present clinical symptoms, which allows doctors to initiate treatment early enough to prevent disease from coming back.
Our quest for the molecular signatures of cancer — named the Early Detection and Intervention Initiative — is already under way. Thanks to generous private contributions, the center has been able to acquire new technology that will aid our work in this exciting new field. Yet there is much more work to be done. Your financial support is crucial to our early detection research, and your participation in research studies makes it possible for us to translate laboratory breakthroughs into clinical practice. Together, we will continue to make a difference in the fight against cancer.
Lee Hartwell
President & Director
