Best Life: Pancreatic cancer blood test

HACKENSACK, N.J. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – Pancreatic cancer grows silently with very few symptoms. Doctors often don’t catch it until it’s late stage, making treatment very difficult.

However, a new test designed to detect markers in the blood is accurately predicting which patients might be developing the disease, meaning they can have potentially life-saving treatment.

Nancy Perez knows the pancreas all too well. Pancreatic cancer killed her grandmother, her uncle, and her mother. Perez’s aunt was diagnosed and died two years after her mother.

“I’m approaching my sixties and that’s when my mom was diagnosed and my aunt, so, you know, I get nervous,” said Perez.

Because of her strong family history, Perez has had yearly screening tests, which can be time-consuming and costly. Now, her doctor has recommended a new blood test – the IMMray PanCan-d.

The screening tool checks the serum in the blood for more than eight biomarkers, including CA19-9, which is often used in pancreatic cancer detection.

“When they combine those eight biomarkers plus CA19-9, they arrived at a test that can detect pancreas cancer at stage one. So, very early-stage pancreas cancer, 93% of the time,” said Rosario Ligresti, MD, a gastroenterologist at the Hackensack University Medical Center.

If the blood test results are high, Dr. Ligresti says patients will be referred for additional screening. If doctors catch early-stage cancer, patients can be candidates for surgery, which is the only potential cure.

“Which in my opinion, having done this a very long time is in fact a game changer,” said Dr. Ligresti.

“They sent the blood work out, and I think within a week, Dr. Ligresti called me and said I was negative,” said Perez.

Doctors say diagnosing pancreatic cancer at stage one increases the five-year survival rate to about 49%. The test is part of a clinical trial and is not yet FDA-approved.

Right now, the test is not covered by insurance and the out-of-pocket cost is about $1,000, but Dr. Ligresti says the test should be done every year and if the FDA approves this blood test, insurance companies should begin to cover it.

Contributors to this news report include: Cyndy McGrath, Producer; Kirk Manson, Videographer; Roque Correa, Editor.

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