Masahiro Yoshida never imagined he would live. When doctors found a tumor in his pancreas, it was no bigger than a grain of rice — Stage 0, the earliest possible diagnosis. That tiny tumor, spotted by a blood test developed at Kanazawa University in Japan, was removed. Today, Yoshida is alive and healthy.
Stories like his are rare because pancreatic cancer is devilishly hard to catch early. The disease grows silently, causing no pain and few symptoms until it has spread. By the time most people learn they have it, the cancer is advanced and survival chances are slim. In Japan, only 8.5% of patients live five years after diagnosis.
But researchers at Kanazawa University believe they have found a way to change that. A team led by Dr. Shunji Yamashita, a professor of gastroenterology and dean of the Graduate School of Advanced Preventive Medical Sciences, has developed a simple blood test that can detect pancreatic cancer at its earliest stage — before it spreads, before it becomes deadly.
The test works by reading genetic signals in the blood. When cancer begins growing in the pancreas, even tiny tumors leave traces that show up in gene activity. Dr. Yamashita's team found that a panel of 56 specific gene probes could spot those traces in a sample of blood. In a study of 10 patients with Stage 0 or Stage I cancer, the gene test caught 9 out of 10 cases — a 90% detection rate. The standard test used by doctors for decades, called CA19-9, caught only 1 out of 10.
"The difference is striking," Dr. Yamashita said. "For years, CA19-9 has been the best tool we had, but it simply cannot detect early cancer. Our gene-based approach can."
Early detection matters enormously. At Kanazawa University Hospital, patients diagnosed with Stage 0 pancreatic cancer — before the tumor has spread beyond the pancreas lining — have a 100% five-year survival rate. Stage I patients, whose tumors are still small, survive 74.4% of the time. Compare that to just 8.5% overall, and it is easy to see why finding cancer early saves lives.
The researchers are careful to note that more work remains. The study was small — just 10 patients with early cancer among 253 total cases — and the test is not yet available everywhere. But the results are promising enough that the test, called Panregza, has already been turned into a diagnostic kit and is now sold commercially by Cubix Inc.
For patients like those at Kanazawa University Hospital, this research represents real hope. "If we can catch pancreatic cancer when it is still tiny, we can remove it and cure it," Dr. Yamashita said. "That is the future we are working toward."