Grant: Project Grant

Colorectal cancer is one of the common causes of cancer-related mortality. When detected at early stages, colorectal cancer can be cured with great success. The current methods to screen the general population in Canada consist of detecting blood in the stools, which can be a sign of cancer, followed by a colonoscopy to confirm the diagnosis. This approach has limitations. Less advanced cancers are poorly detected. Also, the high rate of false positives (blood in the stools but no sign of cancer) results in stress and unnecessary colonoscopies for a large number of patients. This research team, composed of basic and clinical scientists, is using proteomics, a method that allows the detection of a large number of proteins at the same time, to screen for colorectal cancer in stool samples. Based on a very promising pilot study using a series of samples obtained from patients with known conditions (controls, benign lesions or cancer), we have identified potential biomarkers. In this study, these biomarkers will be confirmed, and the best ones used to screen patients with unknown conditions. The proteomics-based screening test for colorectal cancer is designed to detect colorectal lesions at early stages and reduce the number of unnecessary colonoscopies. The impact on the health of the Canadian population should be significant.