New test sharpens cancer detection – Awosika
Global Health Management and Information has secured licence for the test, already in use in the US, and is looking to popularize the test in Nigeria, amidst concerns of increasing incidence of cancers. GHMI wants partnership with National Hospital, Abuja, and Lagos University of Teaching Hospital—both of which could kick off validation for the test. […]
Global Health Management and Information has secured licence for the test, already in use in the US, and is looking to popularize the test in Nigeria, amidst concerns of increasing incidence of cancers. GHMI wants partnership with National Hospital, Abuja, and Lagos University of Teaching Hospital—both of which could kick off validation for the test. Epidemiologist, Dr Debo Awosika, President of GHMI, says SIA could help define cancer detection.
What’s Solvent Interaction Analysis?
It had been developed since 1970 and used to separate protein. It’s being used in pharmaceutical quality control. But in 2006, since organs in the body produce protein, and cancer is protein, we believe if we can separate protein in other areas, we can also separate protein in cancer.
Take prostate; it produces a protein called PSA. If the quantity is beyond a certain number, we say go and do a test. What this technology (SIA) does is once the PSA is secreted and you put blood sample in the reagent and mix it up, it will separate normal protein from the cancer affected protein, so you can easily measure the affected ones. That’s why the sensitivity is 98-98% and it is very specific for cancer.
The advantage is that when you pick cancer early, you can cure 90% of cancers. When you pick it late, you can only manage 10% of it, and at the end of the day, they still die. That’s what we see.
What we find in Africa is that by the time an individual is diagnosed with cancer, in two years they die. You see incidence and mortality rates of 1:1. With this technology we can pick it up, and where the government comes in is to look for age and appropriate time to introduce this technology.
With prostate, we know men around 40 start manifesting, so we can say when you go to see your doctor, take this test. The breast [testing protocol] is being developed, and should be out before the end of the year—and women at 25 in the US are being asked to go because of a particular cancer peculiar to black women.
What’s the extent of these tests at the moment?
They are being offered in US by Cleveland Clinic, and another company in Europe is also marketing. GHI has exclusive licence for this technology in Africa. What we want is to be able to bring this technology here to make National Hospital a confirmation centre, so that as they are running the validation tests for other cancers, they can be running a parallel test too.
Why should we wait for the long process in US before we start using something that can save lives here? It is very easy to introduce into any operating lab.
Won’t a validation with National Hospital alone be a monopoly?
National Hospital is not the only lab that will be offering it. It is just creating a validation for it. The population they used in US is a rainbow population, but the population we have here is a homogenous black population. That should give us validation for the technology in black population. We have had discussion with Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
How much is it likely to cost?
That’s something I don’t want to discuss now.
How does SIA test compare with present PSA test?
SIA doesn’t look at quantity of the protein. It looks at, does this protein have any cancer in it. If there’s cancer, it picks it; if there’s no cancer, it doesn’t.
And it can be that specific?
We have validated for prostate and breast, and we are running trials for ovarian cancer. There is only one test for ovarian cancer, and that is genetics. It is a silent killer, but this technology will be able to pick it before it kills anybody. We have it for pancreas. There is no diagnostic technology for pancreatic cancer. We have it for lung. Most times when people come in regarding their lung problem it has already advanced, so many we can look at people who have been smoking 20, 30 years and run this test on them for the trials. That’s how we are going to write the protocol for this technology.