(Republished with permission from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This article originally ran in the Health & Fitness section on Thursday, October 17, 2005)
Chances are we all know someone whose health seems to defy the odds. My late maternal grandmother was just such an example. She was a lifelong smoker who never developed lung cancer.
Scientists believe people like my grandmother are more than just lucky. They appear to be somehow genetically blessed, failing to develop malignancies even in the face of increased environmental risk.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine are at work on a project aimed at unlocking the secrets of this apparent genetic gift. The project centers on comparing the genetic and protein factors of a group of healthy control subjects to similar information collected from cancer patients.
Dr. Paul Goodfellow is the cancer genetics program leader at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. A little less than a year ago, he and his colleagues began this ambitious research project with the ultimate goal of developing a standard blood test to screen for all cancers, perhaps detecting tumors even before they begin.
The study is called the Cancer-Free Controls Initiative. Its success hinges largely on the participation of people who have never developed cancer; 1,000 male and 1,000 female volunteers over 65 who’ve never developed malignant tumors are needed to donate a blood sample and answer questions on a detailed medical survey.
The entire time commitment for research subjects is 20 to 30 minutes. But Goodfellow believes their contribution will one day change the face of cancer diagnosis and treatment.
“Cancer is a disruption of normal biology,” he said. “Scientists know how to manipulate both normal and abnormal biology, and we hope to be able to use genetic information to develop strategies to prevent or reverse disease in its earliest phases, long before it’s a detectable cancer that’s bringing about symptoms.”
Once a volunteer’s blood and data have been collected, the information is given a number and the patient’s name is no longer attached to the sample.
“We’re storing that information in a coded way, nonidentifiable,” Goodfellow said. “Their blood that can be used in thousands of cancer tests is being put away in little storage units that can be distributed to investigators to use in the development of new tests for cancer.”
In one such research project, the DNA of people with cancer is being compared to the DNA of healthy people without cancer. Advances in laboratory technology allow local scientists to track the genetic differences that appear to raise or lower the risk of developing cancer, differences that appear to offer protection from environmental cancer triggers for some people and contribute to disease risk in others.
The specimens are also being used in breast, uterine and cervical cancer and leukemia research.
Cancer screening tests already exist for very rare, inherited forms of malignancies. But over the next two to five years, Goodfellow hopes his developing resource of healthy volunteer specimens will lead to new screening tests for common cancers that represent major health problems.
For more information about the Cancer-Free Controls Initiative, call 314-454-5112.
Kay Quinn is an anchorwoman and reporter at KSDK (Channel 5).
Copyright 2005 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.