NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
NIH News National Cancer Institute (NCI)
http://www.nci.nih.gov/
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
Contact: Jennifer Michalowski
NCI Press Office (301) 496-6641

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DIAGNOSING OVARIAN CANCER

APRIL 9, 2003- In collaboration with Correlogic Systems, Inc., NCI and FDA scientists have improved the NCI/FDA/Correlogic method of ovarian cancer diagnosis currently under evaluation**. The approach uses Correlogic's artificial intelligence computer programs to analyze the patterns of proteins in the blood and can detect the presence of disease even at early stages. In a previously published study, researchers used the technique to successfully differentiate between blood samples taken from patients with ovarian cancer and those from unaffected individuals.

The researchers discovered patterns of proteins that correctly identify 100 percent of blood samples as being from either unaffected individuals or patients with ovarian cancer. This is an improvement on the previous analysis, which correctly identified 100 percent of the samples from patients with cancer, but only 95 percent of the non-cancer samples.

The researchers analyzed the proteins using mass spectroscopy, a technique that sorts proteins and other molecules based on their weight and electrical charge; they attribute the improvement in specificity primarily to the use of a higher resolution mass spectrometer in the most recent study. "The increased resolution allows us to distinguish more features within the patterns generated from the serum samples," said Timothy Veenstra, Ph.D., of the Mass Spectrometry Center at NCI-Frederick.

** Abstract 4846, Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Meeting of the AACR