Detection of cancer is a challenging task, especially since many common diffuse symptoms overlap with non-malignant conditions. In an article in Nature Communications it was shown that plasma protein profiling can be used to identify cancer among patients with non-specific symptoms.

Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide and the key to reduce cancer-related mortality and morbidity is early detection and diagnosis. Patients presenting with non-specific symptoms are not qualified for the organ-specific cancer diagnostic pathways and therefore the time of diagnosis can be delayed. The ability to discriminate between patients at high risk of cancer and those without cancer could be essential to decrease the time to diagnosis in this group of patients.

In this study next-generation protein profiling based on proximity extension assays was used in an attempt to identify a pan-cancer biomarker signature in blood that could aid this discrimination. By analyzing blood samples from almost 500 patients presenting with non-specific symptoms prior to extensive cancer diagnostic workup a core set of proteins associated with a new cancer diagnosis was identified. This protein signature was shown to be able to discriminate between patients later diagnosed with cancer and patients diagnosed with non-malignant autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, and this was further confirmed in an independent cohort.

The results indicate that patients with non-specific symptoms who are at elevated risk of an underlying malignancy in the future could be identified using cancer-specific protein signatures in a simple and non-invasive blood test.

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