FRIDAY, June 7 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers in South Korea say they've developed a blood test that spots genetic changes that signal the presence of colon cancer.

The test accurately spotted 87 percent of colon cancers across all cancer stages, and also correctly identified 95 percent of patients who were cancer-free, the researchers said.

Colon cancer remains the second leading cancer killer in the United States, after lung cancer. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 137,000 Americans were diagnosed with the disease in 2009; 40 percent of people diagnosed will die from the disease.

Right now, invasive colonoscopy remains the "gold standard" for spotting cancer early, although fecal occult blood testing (using stool samples) also is used. What's needed is a highly accurate but noninvasive testing method, experts say.

The new blood test looks at the "methylation" of genes, a biochemical process that is key to how genes are expressed and function. Investigators from Genomictree Inc. and Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul said they spotted a set of genes with patterns of methylation that seems to be specific to tissues from colon cancer tumors. Changes in one gene in particular, called SDC2, seemed especially tied to colon cancer growth and spread.

As reported in the July issue of the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, the team tested the gene-based screen in tissues taken from 133 colon cancer patients. As expected, tissues taken from colon cancer tumors in these patients showed the characteristic gene changes, while samples taken from adjacent healthy tissues did not.

More important, the same genetic hallmarks of colon cancer (or their absence) "could be measured in [blood] samples from colorectal cancer patients and healthy individuals," the researchers said in a journal news release.

The test was able to detect stage 1 cancer 92 percent of the time, "indicating that SDC2 is suitable for early detection of [colorectal cancer] where therapeutic interventions have the greatest likelihood of curing the patient from the disease," study lead author TaeJeong Oh said in the news release.

Oh said the test could be used either in addition to conventional colonoscopy or perhaps as an alternative.

Experts were cautious about the potential utility of the new test.

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Gene-Based Blood Test Might Help Spot Colon Cancer

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