Biomarker for Early Detection of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma

NYU Langone Medical Center researchers and their colleagues are making strides to find a way to reliably screen for pleural mesothelioma, which threatens an estimated 7.5 million workers in the United States who have been exposed to asbestos. The level of osteopontin (OPN), a protein biomarker, in blood serum has been characterized as an early sign of pleural mesothelioma, a cancer of the chest cavity and lungs that is caused by exposure to asbestos. But recent assays have shown that plasma OPN levels are a more reliable indicator of this type of cancer. Researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center, Karmanos Cancer Institute, and University of Hawaii Cancer Center present a study showing that plasma OPN levels are a sensitive biomarker. They measured OPN levels in blood plasma of 39 mesothelioma patients and 79 asbestos-exposed individuals; plasma OPN levels appeared a sensitive discriminator for the development of pleural mesothelioma in these high-risk individuals.-NYU Langone Medical Center / New York University School of Medicine