(File Photo of the Allegheny Health Network Logo)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) Researchers from Allegheny Health Network (AHN) Cancer Center recently contributed to a major international study that evaluated a new blood-based test that could help detect pancreatic cancer earlier, when the treatment is most effective.

Investigators found that this blood test achieved high sensitivity for detecting early-stage disease and it showed potential to reduce false-positive results compared with existing approaches.

This study was published in Nature Medicine, and it included over 1,700 patients from institutions across the United States, Europe and Asia.

It highlighted a large-scale collaborative effort to improve strategies of early cancer detection.

The AHN Cancer Center played a key role in this study by contributing data of patients, clinical expertise and biospecimens.

The prospective, multicenter study assessed a novel liquid biopsy approach which analyzed microRNA markers in the blood and combines them with the commonly used biomarker called CA 19-9.

The resulting composite score, which was known as PANXEON, demonstrated strong performance in identifying early-stage pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common form of pancreatic cancer and a disease which is often difficult to diagnose at an early stage.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is one of the deadliest cancers and it has a five-year survival rate of about 12 percent and the majority of its cases are diagnosed at advanced stages.

AHN researchers also supported a cohort that was used to evaluate how some biomarker levels change before and after treatment and they helped to inform the potential clinical applications of the assay.