Rubicon公司研制出新型癌症检测技术

一种能更有效诊断与判断癌症预后的技术业已研制成功。该方法能够在癌症形成与进展过程中，从患者的血清与尿液中检测出异常DNA甲基化的模式。

该技术被叫做MethylPlex，方法简单但是十分敏感，克服了时间与成本的障碍，正是这些障碍使得使用DNA甲基化筛查癌症直到现在都不切实际。当描绘基因表达情况的时候，使用MethylPlex基因芯片描绘基因组甲基化的方法简单而且价廉。检测早期前列腺与食管癌的关键指标，是根据几百例患者甲基化模式来诊断的。MethylPlex是Rubicon基因公司(Ann Arbor, MI, USA)的产品。

医院以及实验室都将使用价廉、非创伤性的MethylPlex诊断方法。最初的检测将使用前列腺特异性抗原或者其他前列腺癌指标水平较高患者的血清或者尿液，来鉴别出那些应当使用激进治疗方案的患者，防止患者进行定期活检或者不必要手术。根据Rubicon公司的说法，MethylPlex技术还具有诊断其他类型癌症的能力。该公司已经发现了大约1000个与癌症相关的新甲基化位点，是过去10年采用其他技术发现数量的2倍。

Rubicon基因公司创始人兼CSO Vladimir Makarov博士说:“MethylPlex是破译这种诊断潜能的关键，因为它能够在1天的时间内产生10,000条基因的高清晰甲基化图谱，而每条基因的检测成本低于0.10美元，从而将发现与证实新指标的成本降低了大约100倍” 。
 
New Cancer-Detection Technology
 
A more effective technology for the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer has been developed that detects the patterns of abnormal DNA methylation arising in the serum and urine of patients during tumor formation and progression.

Called MethylPlex, the method is simple but is the most sensitive and overcomes barriers of time and cost that have made cancer screening based on DNA methylation impractical until now. MethylPlex microarray profiling of genome methylation is as simple and inexpensive as the profiling of gene expression. Key markers for detecting two initial types of cancer, prostate and esophageal, will be determined by analyzing the methylation patterns from hundreds of patients. MethylPlex is the product of Rubicon Genomics (Ann Arbor, MI, USA).

Hospitals and reference laboratories will use inexpensive, noninvasive MethylPlex diagnostic tests. The first tests will use serum or urine from patients with high prostate-
specific antigen (PSA) or other indications of prostate cancer to identify those cases that should be treated aggressively, preventing patients from having to undergo periodic biopsies or unnecessary surgeries. MethylPlex has equal potential for diagnosing other types of cancer, according to Rubicon. The company has discovered almost 1,000 new methylation sites associated with cancer, more than double the number discovered by other technologies in the past 10 years.

“MethylPlex is the key to unlocking this diagnostic potential because it produces high resolution maps of methylation for more than 10,000 genes in one day for less than U.S.$0.10 per gene,” noted Dr. Vladimir Makarov, founder and CSO of Rubicon Genomics. “This reduces the time and cost to discover and validate new markers by nearly 100-fold.”