Using antibodies to detect cancerous cells may be the way forward in the detection of cervical and other cancers. This is the ground-breaking finding of Dr Gareth Williams and colleagues at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research Campaign Institute.

Using antibodies to detect cancerous cells may be the way forward in the detection of cervical and other cancers. This is the ground-breaking finding of Dr Gareth Williams and colleagues at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research Campaign Institute.

Dr Gareth Williams, outside the Institute.

Cervical smears have massively reduced deaths from cervical cancer. But they still depend on the human eye to detect the subtle cellular changes that warn of the first onset of the disease. Inevitably sometimes these changes are overlooked. The result is that some women (10-30% of all cases depending on region) are wrongly given the all-clear.

Dr Williams and his team decided to try and find other ways of identifying the onset of the disease, using the fact that two particular proteins play an important role at this early stage. They developed antibodies against these two proteins, which could be labelled with fluorescent dye. In a smear test, the tumour cells would light up with the antibodies.

A trial of 58 women found that the new technique agreed with traditional method - but it also picked up two "false negatives". These two cases, given the all-clear by the traditional method, did in fact show the early stages of the disease.

The antibody test may mean that identifying pre-cancerous cell changes can be semi-automated. It may also help in detecting the early stages of other common cancers, such as colon, breast, prostate and bladder, which at present are usually identified only at an advanced stage.

Further information on this and other ongoing medical research at the University can be found in the School of Clinical Medicine Review.


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