Skin cancer test an important step
TEST TO RELIEVE PRESSURE ON NHS WAITING LIST
A FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND test that can predict if skin cancer is likely to recur in patients has been developed in Newcastle.
Prof Penny Lovat and her team at Newcastle University have come up with the test – based on examining the biopsies removed from patients – and are already offering it to patients through a “spin-out” company called AMLo Biosciences.
The next step is for the test to get approval from The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and to be available on the NHS. At the moment it is “going through the process”, but the team are hopeful that soon it could be rolled out and benefit thousands of patients.
When this happens, Prof Lovat hopes it will help bring down NHS waiting lists and save the health service money.
Melanoma is one of the cancers that dogged Sir Bobby Robson – and currently around 16,000 people a year in the UK are diagnosed with it.
For most, if caught early, the cancer is removed, but for some the melanoma can spread or return.
Prof Lovat said that while only a small proportion – around 10% – of stage one melanomas spread and require further treatment, there’s not previously been a reliable way of finding out in which people the cancer will recur.
She said: “Because we haven’t had any way of stratifying those who may be higher risk, we have to treat everybody the same. That’s a lot of follow-up, a lot of visits to the NHS – and we all know how much pressure the pandemic has put on the NHS.”
Prof Lovat said the test she and her team have developed is a way of highlighting those who are likely to need follow-up care.
“The really exciting thing this test provides is a really reliable answer to whether the tumour is going to spread,” she said. “The test is based on the proteins and their expression on the skin. The power of our test is showing how these proteins demonstrate lower risk. Our test offers a personalised prognosis as it more accurately predicts if your skin cancer is unlikely to spread.
“This test will aid clinicians to identify genuinely low-risk patients diagnosed with an early stage melanoma and to reduce the number of follow-up appointments for those identified as low risk, saving NHS time and money.”
The top scientist explained that two proteins were usually found “overlying” the melanoma, and that examining their presence helped reveal more about the risk of cancer spreading or returning.
The professor also emphasised how much of a team effort the research had been over a decade – highlighting British Skin Foundation, doctors and nurses who have helped develop the test in clinical settings, the other groups who have funded her team’s research and her team itself. Prof Lovat said: “Like mortar and bricks holding together a wall, the proteins [are] key to maintaining the integrity of the upper layer of the skin. When these proteins are lost, gaps develop – like the mortar crumbling away in the wall.
This allows the tumour to spread and ultimately ulcerate, which we know is a process associated with higher-risk tumours.”
The Gosforth-based researcher said that being able to help develop the test – which has been validated using volunteer melanoma patients from around the world – was exactly why she had wanted to work in scientific research.
“Straight from school I worked in a lab doing tests,” she said. “And at that point, if I had been asked about any career dream, it would have been to develop a test myself and be able to put that back into the lab.”
Professor Nick Levell, a consultant dermatologist who works with the British Skin Foundation added: “This British Skin Foundation cofunded research is an important step forward in making care after melanoma more personal.”