Proteome Sciences. AGM Statement.

Was just having a browse of Cattlenetwork.com, as one does on New years day, to find this article:

Center Stage In '06: Gas, Iran, New Cancer Tests

In a half-dozen or so different realms, Wall Street Journal reporters took a shot at identifying a few jolts that might lie ahead in the new year.

CANCER TESTING: Look for the opening shots in what could become a revolution in cancer diagnosis: Detection by means of "biomarkers" -- blood proteins that can disclose the existence of a mere handful of malignant cells in someone's body. They have the potential to reveal certain cancers much earlier than current screening tests such as colonoscopies and mammograms.

Clinical trials of biomarkers for ovarian, prostate, lung and colon cancer are under way. More biomarkers are likely to be found and validated in 2006.

Today's "early detection" often finds cancer too late, and as for therapies, even the most cutting-edge often improve survival only by a matter of months. But biomarkers, once the diagnosis they suggest is confirmed, could get patients into surgery or other treatment months or years sooner, improving survival odds. Meanwhile, if biomarkers signal a clean bill of health, patients would be able to reduce the frequency of invasive tests such as colonoscopies or even skip them.

Like the human genome project, biomarkers are riding important advances in technology. A technique called mass spectrometry currently can identify the 2,000 or so most abundant proteins in the blood. But blood has an estimated eight million different proteins, which vary greatly in size and concentration. Some, if detected, might show that a cancer exists somewhere in the body. As mass spectrometry advances and can identify more proteins, it "will allow us to look in depth at many new candidate biomarkers," says Gordon Mills, an oncologist at Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

An early-detection method can stumble either if it yields too many false positives or if it detects many indolent cancers that wouldn't shorten a lifespan if left untreated. But biomarker medicine is an "enormously revealing and important technique," says Lee Hartwell, director of Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and offers the best hope of meeting the National Cancer Institute's goal of eliminating suffering and death from cancer by 2015.

Full article here: