Study on Detecting Breast Cancer Recurrence
2010-11-01
Professor Analytical & Physical Chemistry
Professor Dan Raftery, leading a team of cancer researchers at Matrix-Bio a company he founded in the Purdue Research Park, has discovered a blood test that accurately detects cancer recurrence an average of 13 months before clinical diagnosis in more than half of patients.
The peer-reviewed journal Cancer Research, a publication of the American Association of Cancer Research, has published Matrix-Bio's findings, Early Detection of Recurrent Breast Cancer Using Metabolite Profiling. Authored by Raftery with Vincent M. Asiago, Leiddy Z. Alvarado, Naraimhamurthy Shanaiah, G. A. Nagana Gowda, Kwadwo Owusu-Sarfo and Robert Ballas, the study's findings support the importance of early breast cancer detection and recurrence.
Using metabolite-profiling methods, Matrix-Bio's VeraMarkerTM-BCR blood test correctly predicted a recurrence of breast cancer in 55 percent of the patient survivors an average of 13 months before a clinical diagnosis.
Matrix-Bio's cancer monitoring test was developed using a powerful combination of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry analytical methods. The test also can be run on a single mass spectrometry platform.