Biologists find an early sign of cancer
Years before they show any other signs of disease, pancreatic cancer patients have very high levels of certain amino acids in their bloodstream, according to a new study from MIT, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Broad Institute. This finding, which suggests that muscle tissue is broken down in the disease’s earliest stages, could offer new insights into developing early diagnostics for pancreatic cancer, which kills about 40,000 Americans every year and is usually not caught until it is too late to treat. The study, which appears today in the journal Nature Medicine, is based on an analysis of blood samples from 1,500 people participating in long-term health studies. The researchers compared samples from people who were eventually diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and samples from those who were not. The findings were dramatic: People with a surge in amino acids known as branched chain amino acids were far more likely to be diagnosed...