The team of Prof. Luo Yongzhang from the School of Life Sciences at the University of China has independently developed the "Heat Shock Protein 90α Kit". Patients can detect cancer by drawing a drop of blood. The kit has been approved by the State Food and Drug Administration, and can be directly applied in the clinic, properly "Made in China".
While reading this news, people often mistakenly think that in the future, they can just draw blood to detect cancer, and don't need to do any ultrasound or CT anymore.
This is not the case.
Measuring tumor markers may not be accurate
Professor Liao Zhener, director of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Cancer Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, clearly pointed out that the "Heat Shock Protein 90α Reagent," which was developed by Tsinghua University, is not a good way to detect cancer. The "Heat Shock Protein 90α Reagent Kit" can only be used to detect a certain cancer indicator, and can not replace the professional cancer prevention physical examination.
The reason is that the kit measures a substance called heat shock protein 90α, which is one of the tumor markers in the human body.
"The so-called tumor markers are either secretions of the body's tumor cells or substances secreted by the body in response to tumor cells." Prof. Liao Zhener said.
But elevated levels of tumor markers do not necessarily mean you have cancer.
After all, there are benign and malignant tumors, and malignant tumors are cancer. Sometimes, benign tumors and certain inflammatory conditions in the body can cause tumor marker levels to spike.
With cancer, tumor marker levels don't necessarily increase.
Because there are many types of cancer, the ones that heat shock protein 90 alpha can indicate are mainly liver and lung cancers.
Liao Zhener believes that "the heat shock protein 90α kit cannot be used alone as a means of detecting cancer," but at best as an auxiliary program for screening liver and lung cancers. If we rely on it alone, there may be some people who are healthy but are detected as having "cancer", or there may be cancer patients who fall through the cracks.
In fact, the real purpose of the current heat shock protein 90α kit is not to detect all cancers for the general public.
The State Food and Drug Administration's registration approval states that the kit is "used for monitoring the condition and evaluating the efficacy of patients who have been clearly diagnosed with lung cancer and liver cancer".