A much-needed early test for ovarian cancer could be the result of new research at UC Davis. Researchers have identified 15 biological markers that appear to be present in the blood of patients with ovarian cancer, but not healthy people, and that were also produced by cancer cells in the lab.

About 20,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year, and almost three-quarters die from it. The disease is readily treatable in its early stages but is usually not detected until the cancer has spread beyond the ovaries.

Researchers led by Carlito Lebrilla, professor in the departments of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, and Suzanne Miyamoto from the Division of Hematology and Oncology, UC Davis Cancer Center, looked at chains of sugars, or "oligosaccharides" attached to proteins secreted by cancer cells. They stripped the oligosaccharides from the proteins and used sophisticated techniques to profile the mixture. They then obtained blood samples from women with or without ovarian cancer and performed the same type of analysis.

This approach is called "glycomics," because like studies of the human genome (DNA) or proteome (proteins) it looks at a large number of samples at the same time. The prefix "glyco-" refers to molecules that contain carbohydrate or sugar-type structures.

Lebrilla's group found 15 unique markers produced by cancer cells grown in the lab that were also found in the blood of patients with ovarian cancer.

The researchers plan to conduct larger clinical studies to test their findings. They also want to determine how the pattern of markers develops and changes in cancer patients, and whether it could be developed into a diagnostic test for ovarian cancer to use alongside other methods such as ultrasound. Lebrilla and colleagues have established a company, Glycometrix Inc., to develop the patented technology.

In addition to Lebrilla and Miyamoto, the authors on the study are Hyun Joo An, Katherine Lancaster, Crystal Kirmiz and Bensheng Li, Department of Chemistry; Kit Lam, Department of Internal Medicine; and Gary Lieserowitz, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The study is published in the July 7 issue of the Journal of Proteome Research and was funded by the National Institutes of Health.