Researchers say they are developing a simple spit test to help diagnose early-stage lung cancer in current and former smokers. Reporting In The Journal Clinical Cancer Research (UPI) the scientists said the gene probe would use the hereditary material deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, coughed up with phlegm to detect the potentially fatal malignancy.
The team reported that its inexpensive test, which checks whether two tumor-suppressing genes are missing in sputum cells, identified 76 percent of stage I lung cancer patients, compared to 47 percent identified through current sputum "cytology" tests that seek changes in cell structure.
The next step is to expand the test to screen for up to eight genes, the scientists said. The trick is to find genes that specifically indicate cancer rather than cellular damage that occurs from smoking but does not necessarily portend malignancy, they said.
"There is an urgent need to develop reliable early diagnostic biomarkers for lung cancer that can be detected non-invasively, and these two genes look to be great candidate markers for such a test," said study investigator Dr. Feng Jiang, assistant professor of pathology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
"We need to validate our findings, of course, but we have shown that the genetic aberrations seen in sputum reflect the same genetic aberrations found in lung tumors and that these molecular changes occur before any morphological changes can be seen in a cytology test."
