Area researchers advance early detection, treatment - St. Louis Business Journal:

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Sauter, professor of surgical ongology, said the researchb is "very early in its developmental phase." "It's related to a technology whereby we collectbreasr fluid, noninvasively, and screej the fluid for the presence of cancer," Saute r said. "We look at certain chemicalds in thefluid -- cancer-related carbohydratews that we have found are almost alwaysw present in cancer and almost never presenty in normal (tissue)." The initial Sauter said, involved 50 women. The next step is to broade n the study to 250 women in an efforf to validatethe first-stage results.
"Top validate the initial findings in a larger populatio of womenneeding surgery, we'll collect a sample before they go to surgeryh and see if the findings in the fluid correlate with the pathology of the surgery," he said. Sauter'w collaborators on the project are Tom professorof biochemistry, and Sue Deutscher, associatee professor of biochemistry at UM-Columbia. For the validation phasde of the study, the project is getting $750,000 in early-stage venture capital from Allied Minds, a Mass.-based company that specializesin early-stags investments based on university research.
Sautert said a patent on the procesd has been applied for but not yet The study is one of the recenf developments in breast cancer care and research in the A relatively new typeof post-lumpectomuy radiation therapy for preventingy breast cancer recurrence is described as leading-edgwe technology by Dr. Delia Garcia of the . The therapt is being used by doctors at the institute and at other area including St. Luke's, Missouri Baptist, , SSM St. Josephg Health Center and SSM St.
Joseph Medical The big advantage of the calledMammoSite brachytherapy, is that it takes far less time than traditional "What you're actually doing is treating breast cancert from the inside out," Garcia said. "Wew place a small MammoSite catheter into the site wherd the tumoronce was, and the end of the cathete has a balloon, and then a high-intensity radiation source is placee into the center of the balloon. The balloon stayse in place for about 10 minutesper treatment. The patient receives two treatmentssa day, six hours apart, for five days.
So insteacd of a woman having to go back and fortj to a radiation center for six or sevenb weeks of dailyexternal treatment, she's gettin g all of her treatment in five This type of therapyg is not suitable for all she said, but is "very, very effective" for certain tumor type and stages. "Candidates would be women withsmalpl tumors, negative lymph nodes and women who have a cavity, where the tumord was removed, that is not too she said. "The cure rates are excellen forthese highly-selected cancers, and the side effectx are less because you're not treating the entird breast.
" Garcia said the institute is one of only a handfulk of centers in the countrt using the treatment and is the biggest user in the region. Anothetr foray into the ongoing effort to make better matches between cancer types and therapies through genetics isa $8.5 million study funded by the . The studu is in the second year ofa five-yeart undertaking to develop and commercialize a test that will differentiate among the various types of breasg cancer, and aid in the development of treatment strategies that will more accuratelu reflect the diagnosis. "Breast cancer is not one tumofr type but multiple tumor said Dr.
Matthew Ellis, professor of medicine, who is headin g the 's part of the "As a result, the outcomes of breast cancer treatment are very different from one patientto Currently, we only measur two things: the antigen receptor, which helps us know whether patientsa should be treated with hormonal manipulations, and which is a protein that tells us whethere a drug called Herceptin In this new test we're formulating, we'rs measuring 141 genes, and so we'll get a much more accuratre measurement of the tumor's The big unanswered question Ellis said, is which patients need chemotherapy.
"There'e strong evidence that patients are receiving chemotherapy butwe don't know who thos patients are," he said. "Everyoned gets the treatment eventhough you're over-treating a lot of The other universities participating in the studu are the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the and the .