Development of cancer risk diagnosis method with blood samples

In imaging diagnosis, it is quite difficult to capture cancer smaller than 1 cm in diameter, but there are as many as 1 billion cancer cells in it. If you can capture cancer cells present in the blood, proteins secreted by cancer cells, or DNA derived from broken cancer cells, etc., we can diagnose the risk of cancer earlier than diagnostic imaging. Based on that belief, we have collected blood specimens from preoperative to recurrent cases of hepatobiliary pancreatic cancer patients who have an extremely high recurrence rate even after curative resection by surgery, and have been working on identifying recurrence prediction markers. GPC3, which we identified as a cancer-specific antigen, is also a secreted protein and is detected as a tumor marker in the patient's blood of hepatocellular carcinoma. We have found a possibility to predict recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma by measuring GPC3 in the blood in collaboration with a company. We will also verify that it can be used for early detection in the future. In the future, we may be able to diagnose the risk of onset and recurrence of cancer by single cell analysis of circulating cancer cells, analysis of free mutated DNA in blood, etc. We have a dream to create individualized cancer prevention vaccine system from these information.

 1. Ofuji K, Saito K, Suzuki S, Shimomura M, Shirakwa H, Nobuoka D, Yawada Y, Yoshimura M, Tsuchiya N, Takahashi M, Yoshikawa T, Tada Y, Konishi M, Takahashi S, Gotohda N, Nakamoto Y, Nakatsura T. Perioperative plasma glypican-3 level may enable prediction of the risk of recurrence after surgery in patients with stage I hepatocellular carcinoma. Oncotarget. 2016 Dec 27. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.14271.