LONDON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - A protein found in very high levels in some people suffering from breast and colon cancer may help doctors predict a patient's chance of survival, Austrian researchers said on Friday.
　　Scientists at Innsbruck University Hospital have shown that breast cancer patients with too much of a protein called Ep-CAM are more likely to die of the disease.

"If these data can be validated in a larger population of patients and in prospective studies, Ep-CAM overexpression could become a relevant marker for risk assessment," Dr. Gunther Gastl and his colleagues said in a study in The Lancet medical journal.

Every cell in the body has Ep-CAM, which transmits messages between cells and binds them, but in cancerous cells there is an abnormal amount of the protein. The researchers suspect Ep-CAM plays a role in the metastasis, or spread of cancer, throughout the body.

Gastl and his team examined breast tissue from 205 women who had breast cancer surgery between 1980-1991 and measured levels of the proteins.

After monitoring the women's progress over an average 10.8 years they discovered that 35.6% of patients with high levels of the protein had the poorest survival rates. In addition to identifying patients with a poor prognosis, Gastl said the finding could lead to new treatments to attack the cancerous cells.

He called for further studies to confirm his findings.

After skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in most developed countries. It affects about one in 10 women and occurs most often in women over 50 years old. Early detection and treatment improves a patient's chance of survival.

(From Reuters)