Novel plasma telomerase detection method to improve cancer diagnostic assessment

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 12; no. 5; p. e0174266
• Main Authors: Hilal, George, Reitzel, Ruth, Al Hamal, Zainab, Chaftari, Anne-Marie, Al Wohoush, Iba, Jiang, Ying, Hachem, Ray, Raad, Issam I
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 03.05.2017; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adenocarcinoma; Analysis; Animal tissues; Animals; Biology and Life Sciences; Biopsy; Bladder cancer; Blood; Breast cancer; Cancer; Cancer therapies; Carcinoma, Pancreatic Ductal - diagnosis; Carcinoma, Pancreatic Ductal - enzymology; Case-Control Studies; Colorectal cancer; Diagnosis; Diagnostic systems; Disease control; Exhausting; Humans; In vivo methods and tests; Infections; Infectious diseases; Liver cancer; Lymphoma; Medical diagnosis; Medical prognosis; Medicine and Health Sciences; Methods; Mice; mRNA; Pancreas; Pancreatic cancer; Pancreatic Neoplasms - diagnosis; Pancreatic Neoplasms - enzymology; Patients; Physical Sciences; Polymerase chain reaction; Prostate cancer; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; Review boards; RNA; Sensitivity and Specificity; Telomerase; Telomerase - blood; Tumors; United States > US; Texas
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174266

The activity levels of telomerase and its mRNA have been found to be more diagnostically sensitive than cytological results in many cancerous tissues and correlate well with the clinical disease stage. Currently, there are several methods of detecting telomerase in tissues and in blood. The most commonly used method is a conventional quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) which is time and labor exhausting. We have developed a simple and innovative blood test method that allows us to diagnose cancer and relapsed cancer in a cost- and time -effective manner. We had evaluated our novel method in two populations: 1) in vivo in three mice with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) versus one control mouse and 2) clinically in 30 cancer patients versus 10 individuals without cancer. We compared our novel method with the old conventional method. At least one sample was obtained from each patient included in the study. The novel method substantially increased the sensitivity (from 37% to 77%, p<0.001) and negative predictive value (from 32% to 56%, p = 0.005) of the telomerase test for all cancer patients (those who were substantially treated and those who were not). There was no significant difference in telomerase activity between cancer patients and healthy volunteers using the conventional method (p = 0.13), whereas there was a significant difference using the novel method (p = 0.001). Conventional method shows no significant difference in telomerase activity between cancer patients and healthy volunteers (p = 0.13), whereas there was a significant difference using the novel method (p = 0.001).