Physicians may soon have new tool to closely track severity, potential spread of metastatic melanoma

Source: News Medical, January 2016

Physicians treating patients with metastatic melanoma — one of the most aggressive forms of skin cancer — may soon have a superior tool in their efforts to closely track the disease.

A new study shows that a blood test which monitors blood levels of DNA fragments from dead cancer cells does a better job than the current standard test at tracking the severity and potential spread of metastatic melanoma. The study, by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and its Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, is set for publication tomorrow in the January edition of Molecular Oncology.

The standard test, in widespread use for decades to inform treatment decisions, measures blood levels of the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase, or LDH. Levels of the enzyme tend to spike during aggressive tumor growth, but are also known to rise as part of other diseases and biological functions. The alternative test looks at levels of circulating tumor DNA, or ctDNA, released into the blood when tumor cells die and break apart to spill their contents.