Lung cancer takes the lives of more Americans each year than any other cancer, and while we know that smokers and ex-smokers are at the greatest risk of developing lung cancer, it's not often detected in early, more curable stages. But now it looks like there is some good news coming out of Gaithsburg, Maryland where researchers at Panacea Pharmaceuticals claim that they have found that 99 percent of patients with all stages of lung cancer have detectable levels of a particular protein in their blood that is not present in healthy individuals.

Such a discovery could revolutionize the detection and early treatment of lung cancer, and as more cases are caught early on, the more likely patients are to survive. Panacea reported these encouraging preliminary results this week at an American Association for Cancer Research conference.

Panacea is working toward federal approval that would allow them to market the blood test for high-risk patients.

David Carbone, director of Vanderbilt University's Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center's research program in lung cancer, says:

"Lung cancer is the only major cancer with no approved screening procedure."

Smokers and former smokers are ten to fifty times more likely to develoop lung cancer, but Carbone says:

"There's no way to detect [lung cancer] before they're coughing up blood and suffering shoulder pain."

The cost of screening patients without symptoms using CT scans is not only expensive, but also dangerous. The CT scans have a very high number of false positives, which means some patients are subjected to risky procedures that may not be necessary. In fact, Carbone cited a recent study that showed that up to 1/5 of patients diagnosed with cancer who had part of their lungs surgically removed didn't even have cancer.

The test that Panacea has developed detects a protein known as HAAH, which they claim can be detected as early as stage one using a common laboratory technique called ELISA for identifying proteins in the blood.

The HAAH protein is also believed to be a telltale sign of other kinds of cancer, including cancer of the liver, prostate, brain, and gastrointestinal tract. Doctors suggest that members at groups with a high risk for particular kinds of cancer should be further screened for cancer if they have HAAH in their blood.