Welcome To Gattaca...

Guylhem writes: "Now you should start to fear your own genes. According to this article commented on the French medical news Web site , 13 cancers can be screened with just your blood sample. The kit approved by the FDA will start selling for $100 this week. Maybe leaving blood samples to your insurance, credit card company, your employer is not wise... " Well, I believe this works by detecting certain antibodies produced under certain circumstances rather than analyzing your genes, but this is another step forward to the big privacy debate that is brewing as more and more medical information is available to more and more companies.

Re:Do some research, Michael...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Tests for cancer-related antigens have been in use for some time. For instance, the PSA test, which measure the elevated levels of Prostate
>Specific Antigen released by some ~80% of Prostate tumors. Now, this test is still quite interesting in the variety of cancers it claims to be
>capable of detecting. I wouldn't consider it an earth-shattering breakthrough, though.

You can never be sure you have really a cancer with these tests.
For ex with PSA, some people do produce PSA more than the average, and there's no dosage 100% efficient.

The only valuable diagnosis for cancer is a cytoanalysis of the cells you pick from the patient.

So I guess this test would be potentially harmfull for these people with PSA but without cancer, just like in Gattaca where the main character can't become an astronaut because of his genes, while he obliviously has the possibilies.

IANAL but I'm a MD.

I dont know...

[RobertAG]

...about anyone else, but **I** would like to know if I had cancer as early as possible.

There's something about living that makes life worth living!

$100!?

[yardgnome]

Judging from the >90% accuracy mentioned on the AMDL product info page [http] I have to assume they're using a monoclonal ab (does anyone really use polyclonal for anything other than deactivation anymore?). In that case, how the heck are they selling the entire kit (which includes ab, enzyme, substrate, etc.) for $100? I'm paying over $300 for monoclonal beta-catenin ab's from Trans-Labs! (Given, they're FITC-labeled, but...)

PS - right on about the constant GATTACA references.)

Oopsie

[yardgnome]

Both Michael and I should have read the article more carefully. It's not $100/kit, as the post states. Instead, the article tenatively lists $100/*test* at a hospital, and the kit looks to be good for many, many tests. However, since AMDL reported spending over $10 million on its development, I'm willing to bet the cost of the kit will not be insignificant.

Images of how this works

[QBasic_Dude]

This link has images of the DR70 test in progress: How the DR70 test works [amdl.com].

More info on AMDL and the DR-70 test...

[Guppy]

You can find the the company's website at www.amdl.com [amdl.com], and more detailed information on the DR-70 test here [amdl.com].

BTW, I'm curious why Michael linked to a medical site whose contents are in French. The test is developed and marketed by a US company based in California.

Re:Do some research, Michael...

[Guppy]

"You can never be sure you have really a cancer with these tests.
For ex with PSA, some people do produce PSA more than the average, and there's no dosage 100% efficient."

Whoops, didn't elaborate enough in my original post. I lumped those cases in the "false positives" category.

PS: Why not log in? Slashdot could benefit from an MD's opinion.

Do some research, Michael...

[Guppy]

OK, after taking a look around the company's website, I can tell Michael is not a bio-geek. This is just a quickie post, so please excuse the spelling and details. Anyway:

"...Well, I believe this works by detecting certain antibodies produced under certain circumstances rather than analyzing your genes..."

Just about the only thing Michael gets correct is that the product does not analyze your genes in any way, so the GATTACA comment is way off-base. (OT Rant--Imagine if the media constantly made references to "evil malicious hackers" like in the movie "The Net", every time the Internet was mentioned. Yes, it's *that* annoying to geneticists).

What the test does is detect this "DR-70" (Apparently a proprietary name, BTW) antigen released by certain types of cancers, not an antibody. Antibodies are involved, but this is because the kit itself is an ELISA-based test. ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) is a well-established technique that uses antibodies to detect said antigen. See AMDL's product info page [amdl.com] for pretty pictures on how this works.

"...but this is another step forward to the big privacy debate..."

Suppose your doctor has ordered this test. You've got a lot more problems than privacy. A positive result (barring false positives) doesn't say that you have a genetic suceptibility to a certain type of cancer. It says that you *have* a certain type of cancer.

Tests for cancer-related antigens have been in use for some time. For instance, the PSA test, which measure the elevated levels of Prostate Specific Antigen released by some ~80% of Prostate tumors. Now, this test is still quite interesting in the variety of cancers it claims to be capable of detecting. I wouldn't consider it an earth-shattering breakthrough, though.