The winner of this year's Intel International Science and Engineering Fair developed a way to diagnose early-stage pancreatic cancer, reports DailyRx. Jack Andraka, a 15-year-old from Maryland, devised a dipstick test to determine whether blood or urine contains mesothelin, a marker for pancreatic cancer. A press release from Intel adds that the test has over 90 percent accuracy and is faster, less expensive, and more sensitive than current tests. For this, Jack received $75,000, which he says will go toward college. DailyRx adds that Jack is planning clinical trials and is meeting with Quest Diagnostics.

In a paper published online in advance in the Journal of Clinical Pathology, Emory University School of Medicine's Ankita Patel Desai and colleagues report their use of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry to identify bacteria commonly isolated in cystic fibrosis patients. Comparing their mass spec-based results with those obtained using conventional phenotypic and genotypic analyses, Desai et al. found that "time to identification with 47 bacterial isolates from 24 CF patients showed identification of 85 percent of isolates by MALDI-TOF MS at 48 h [hours] of incubation, compared to only 34 percent with conventional methods."

Elsewhere in the Journal of Clinical Pathology, researchers at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf show that genomic PTEN deletion, while rare, correlates with metastatic disease in gastric adenocarcinoma cases. The team analyzed 230 primary gastric cancers, and of the 180 interpretable primary gastric cancer spots they examined, eight showed PTEN deletions — seven hemizygous and one homozygous. Further, it found that PTEN deletion correlated with nodal and distant metastases.

Researchers led by Marie-Christine Jacob at Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France, describe their assessment of using multiparametric flow cytometry to detect and characterize the immunophenotype of peripheral T-cell lymphoma. As they report in Modern Pathology, the researchers examined 30 peripheral T-cell lymphoma biopsies and 94 control biopsies from lymphoid tissues and found that using multiparametric flow cytometry to analyze the samples' CR-Vβ repertoire was a "highly specific and sensitive technique for peripheral T-cell lymphoma diagnosis when combined with conventional approaches."

Washington University in St. Louis' Samir El-Mofty and his colleagues report in Modern Pathology that p16 immunostaining patterns in oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma correlate with the tumors' human papilloma virus RNA status. El-Mofty and his colleagues studied oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma samples that were partially p16-positive, and found that samples that are more than half stained have transcriptionally active HPV. Additionally, they report that HPV-positive samples have large swaths of confluent staining. This, the researchers say, supports a 70 percent or 75 percent p16 staining cutoff for HPV positivity, or a 50 percent p16 staining cutoff if the staining has more than 25 percent confluence.

Researchers led by George Ruijter from the Erasmus MC University Medical Center in The Netherlands describe their use of a rapid ultraperformance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry assay to detect the tetrasaccharide 6-α-D-glucopyranosyl-maltotriose, or Glc₄, in urine. As the researchers note in an online, early Clinical Chemistry article, Glc₄ is a possible biomarker for a number of glycogen storage diseases. In this paper, the researchers report that their assay is "rapid and analytically specific" and "precise within acceptable limits." Though it cannot distinguish among types of glycogen storage diseases, they say the assay "is potentially suitable for convenient therapeutic monitoring without a derivatization step that is required in other methods."

Also in Clinical Chemistry, a team of researchers in the UK examine under- and over-requesting of pathology tests, using the diabetes Hb A_1c test as a guide. The team looked at 519,664 Hb A_1c test requests from 115,730 patients made at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, and reports that 49 percent of the requests did not follow established guidelines. "Although overrequesting was common, underrequesting was more prevalent, potentially affecting longer-term health outcomes," the team writes. "National guidance appears to be an ineffective approach to changing request behavior, supporting the need for a multisystem approach to reducing variability."

Working in a clinical lab may be a good career choice for some veterans transitioning to civilian life, writes Steve Eichmann at Advance Laboratory. Eichmann recounts the experience of Wendell Jones, who joined the Air Force after receiving a college degree in medical technology. Jones served in military hospitals or labs, and the Air Force gave him the opportunity to pursue a master's degree in the field as well. Jones then specialized in blood banking, and after he left the military, he found a job at a blood center in Louisiana. "Jones says that, provided they have education or background and training in the field, the medical laboratory is a good option for veterans. He notes that most laboratories recognize the leadership and management skills that veteran medical technicians bring with them as they transition from military to civilian life," Eichmann adds.

Researchers from Harbin Medical University in China compared methods for extracting cell-free DNA from serum and determined the diagnostic utility of total serum cell-free DNA and DNA integrity to detect hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma. As they report in Pathology, the researchers measured total serum cell-free DNA levels from 210 patients and controls using qPCR and evaluated the DNA integrity of those samples. From this, they found that the Triton/Heat/Phenol method works best for extracting cell-free DNA, and that there was no difference in total serum DNA levels between patients and controls, though patients had higher DNA integrity levels than controls. "DNA integrity is a promising molecular biomarker for detecting HCC in patients with chronic HBV infection; it reflects the progression and metastatic potential of the tumour," the researchers write.

In that same issue, Italian investigators write that the methylation status of the MGMT gene promoter could be a prognostic factor in metastatic melanoma. The researchers assessed the methylation status of 29 primary melanoma and 74 metastasis samples from 52 patients using a PCR-based approach. They report that one primary melanoma and 22 of the metastases had methylated MGMT gene promoters and that disease-free and overall survival was longer in patients with the methylated gene promoter. "We demonstrated that MGMT promoter methylation is a late event in the biological evolution of cutaneous melanoma, and that the methylation status of metastases might have a prognostic relevance in the patients' outcome, irrespective of the therapy administered," the investigators report.

Finally, researchers led by Australia's Reza Ghassemifar present a molecular tool to evaluate alpha-globin DNA variants' role in alpha-thalassemia. "We have developed an in vitro model which may be utilised to confirm or exclude a pathogenic consequence of a particular mutation," they write in Pathology. The researchers then applied their model to characterize a novel point mutation in a patent. "In this study, in vitro analysis confirmed splicing at the aberrant splice site, with a resultant frameshift and generation of a truncated protein," they add.