Sugar can save the day for patients at high risk of developing esophageal cancer, scientists with the Medical Research Council have learned.

The details can be found in the journal Nature Medicine. But the short version is this: Researchers now know that sugar molecules that line precancerous cells in the esophagus (a condition known as Barrett's dysplasia) display a changed pattern. By tracking those sugar molecules and knowing what the change looks like, they can quickly spot the precancerous cells and remove them before they turn deadly.

It sounds like a surprisingly simple solution to a very deadly problem. Esophageal cancer is particularly nasty. It is the eighth leading cause of death for U.S. men, the research promotion notes. In the U.K., it is the fifth biggest cause of cancer death. And the precancerous cells that lead to the disease can easily turn and require close monitoring. So it is important to have an easy, efficient way to detect Barrett's dysplasia and thereby to stop esophageal cancer from even taking hold.

Doctors often miss the cells using current methods to diagnose and treat patients at risk for the disease, such as endoscopy and biopsy procedures, which help determine if Barrett's dysplasia has begun sprouting, or worse. But tissue samples are taken only from one small part of the esophagus, which means surgeons don't always see those transitional cells. And patients who turn out not to have Barrett's end up going through an unnecessary procedure. A better tool to identify precancerous cells would help limit tissue removal to times of necessity.

The scientists figured out they could find sugar molecules on the surface of precancerous cells by analyzing and testing different tissue samples reflecting various precancerous stages. Sugar-binding wheat germ proteins attached to a fluorescent tag that glows under a certain kind of light, helping track changes in the sugar molecules. Researchers sprayed them onto the tissue samples and saw that dysplasia sites displayed less cell binding and were clearly marked by a green glow.

- here's the release
- check out the abstract

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