Researchers from the Institute for Advanced Biosciences (IAB) at Keio University have developed a method for analyzing saliva that they say can more accurately detect oral and other cancers.
Working in collaboration with David T. Wong, D.M.D., D.M.Sc., a professor of oral biology and director of the Dental Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, the IAB team used capillary electrophoresis mass spectrometry to analyze saliva samples from of 215 subjects.
Capillary electrophoresis mass spectrometry is a metabolomic technology characterized by its ability to measure ionic metabolites all together.
Using this technology, developed at the institute, the researchers were able to detect 54 substances of approximately 500 types of metabolites and found wide differences between those collected from patients with cancers and those from healthy controls. By analyzing these 54 substances, "we have found that this technique enables the identification with high accuracy of metabolic profiles specific to oral (80%), breast (95%), and pancreatic (99%) cancers," the university said in a press release.
The researchers also examined the possibility that factors such as age, sex, and race may have contributed to the occurrence of the differences in concentrations. The results of the examination suggest that such differences are not as large as those detected between the healthy subjects and cancer patients, and that changes due to the difference in diseases are larger, they said.
The results were reported this week at the Metabolomics 2010 conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
"Saliva is attractive in that it can be collected more easily and simply compared with blood, stool, and urine," said Masaru Tomita, director of the IAB. "We hope to contribute to the improvement in future health checkup through extending and diffusing globally this technology not only to cancers but also to a wide range of diseases."
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