和肿瘤活检说拜拜
Blood Protein Patterns Tell Tumor Potential
Is that lump malignant or benign? A blood test that measures levels of hundreds of different proteins may provide biopsy-equivalent answers.
欲知肿瘤良恶性？抽个血就能告诉你！
韦特•吉布斯（Wayt Gibbs）
A routine CAT-scan turns up a suspicious spot. Is it a benign lump? Or a cancerous tumor? In the case of lung spots, four out of five turn out to be harmless. Unfortunately, making that determination takes a long needle and a biopsy, which means a puncture wound in the chest and a risk of infection.
做一个常规的CT，就能发现你身体里的可疑团块，但它是良性还是恶性的呢？百分之八十的肺部肿瘤均为良性，但不幸的是，做这样的活检需要用一根很长的针穿刺取样，而胸部针扎的伤口很有可能感染。
Leroy Hood and colleagues at Seattle’s Institute for Systems Biology have devised a painless blood test that could eliminate the need for most biopsies. They identified 371 proteins that coat lung tumors or leak out of them. Then they looked at blood samples taken from people who had had lung biopsies.
西雅图系统生物研究所的洛里•霍德和他的同事们设计了一种可以代替活检的无痛血液检验法。他们从肺部肿瘤表面和内部鉴定出371种蛋白质，然后将病人的血样检测结果和肺部活检结果进行比对。
A pattern emerged: 13 proteins were significantly higher or lower in patients who had lung cancer than in those whose lumps were benign.
这时，一个规律出现了：良性与恶性肿块之间，有13种蛋白质的表达量具有明显的区别。
The researchers tried the blood test on different patients, and found that when it gave an “all-clear” result, it was correct 90% of the time. The work appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine. [Xiao-jun Li et al, A Blood-Based Proteomic Classifier for the Molecular Characterization of Pulmonary Nodules]
研究人员对不同的病人做了血样检测，并根据这些蛋白进行肿瘤性质的判断，准确率高达90%。
Indi, a diagnostics maker, is commercializing the blood test. Hood says the same approach should work for almost any disease—which could make diagnostics much less prickly.
诊断产品制造商“伊迪恩”正在将此研究成果商业化。霍德表示，依葫芦画瓢，同样的检测方法应该也适用于其他疾病的检测，可以节省许多麻烦。
（题图来源：breastcancer.org）
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