Soon, saliva can tell if you have breast or ovarian cancer

ROORKEE: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT-R) have developed a new saliva-based method to detect breast and ovarian cancers.
In the study published in peer-reviewed journal FASEB Bioadvances, researchers from the biotechnology department of the institute have claimed to have identified proteins that could act as salivary biomarkers in the diagnosis of breast and ovarian cancers.
Kiran Ambatipudi, assistant professor of biotechnology at IIT-R and lead researcher of the study told TOI that breast and ovarian cancers, the most common cancers in women in India, are expected to rise in the next decade. He added that his team of researchers gathered saliva samples from 30 cancer patients, whose disease had advanced to the third or fourth stage, as well as a cohort of 10 healthy people in order to arrive at a conclusion.
“Using mass spectrometry, the team compared saliva samples from healthy individuals against the samples collected from the cancer patients who had undergone at least three cycles of chemotherapy. In an attempt to study organotropism, salivary proteins were analysed by mass spectrometry indicative of pathophysiology of breast and ovarian cancers and were compared to healthy and ovarian chemotherapy subjects,” he said.
He added that “collectively, 646 proteins were identified, of which 409 proteins were confidently identified across all four groups.” “In addition to 409 identified proteins, 352 proteins were common in all groups, while 57 were either present/absent exclusively in one group or common in any two/three groups. These uncommon protein expressions led us to identify the presence of cancer in the patients. This is a one-of-its-kind study on cancer detection through saliva test,” he said.
The heterogeneous and asymptomatic nature of breast and ovarian cancers and their early detection has been difficult using traditional methods such as mammography and blood flow patterns by colour‐flow Doppler imaging and transvaginal ultrasound examination, due to high diagnostic costs and radiation exposure. “Our attempt was to utilise saliva as a non-invasive sample source to identify specific protein biomarkers, which indicate breast & ovarian cancer metastasis. In patients who have undergone three cycles of chemotherapy, the salivary proteins can also act as an indicator of the patient’s response to chemotherapy,” Ambatipudi said.