Pancreatic cancer may not be a silent killer for much longer, if a proprietary blood test developed by a New Jersey-based biophamaceutical company continues to identify patients in the early stages of this horrible disease in drug trials at a high clip.

According to a recent study that monitored 68 patients who had surgery for pancreatic cancer and 19 healthy controls, a blood test using the proprietary PAM4 antibody developed by Immunomedics detected the presence of all stages of pancreatic cancer in 81 percent of the participants (an improvement from a previous test that detected the disease in 77 percent of 53 pancreatic cancer patients.).

Overall, the blood test identified stage 1 pancreatic cancer 62 percent of the time, and its performance improved in stages 2 (86 percent) and 3 and 4 (91 percent). Another good sign: The false-positive rate for the blood test was just 5 percent, rarely noticing pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas that's often confused with the more deadly pancreatic cancer.

healthfinder.gov January 21, 2010

CNNMoney.com January 21, 2010