Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/extended-interview-dr-nicole-urban-explains-clues-of-cancer Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Dr. Nicole Urban of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center talks about the "holy grail" of biomarker research and explains the clues to cancer that doctors seek in patients. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. SUSAN DENTZER: What is the Holy Grail likely to be in biomarker research? DR NICOLE URBAN: Well, the Holy Grail would be to identify cancer using some test. A blood test is — desirable because it's relatively non-invasive. But, what we would really like to do is to identify the cancer before it becomes invasive so that surgery could be performed preventing ovarian cancer.An example of that is the pap smear for cervical cancer– which has reduced mortality by 70 percent of more in this country because the pap smear is able to identify a precursor condition– for the cancer. Now, in ovarian cancer, we haven't identified a precursor lesion which makes it more difficult to identify it. Nevertheless, that would be the Holy Grail would be to identify it before it becomes invasive. The challenge is– SUSAN DENTZER: So the Holy Grail would be to find disease at its earliest stages before it has actually invaded an organ or spread to other organs. DR NICOLE URBAN: That's right. Now, more realistically– we will be happy if we can discover ways to identify the cancer after it has become invasive, but before it– it has become metastatic. So, we would like to identify cancer that can be cured.To find a panel of markers that would be able to identify ovarian cancer while it is still curable. And, the challenge there is that there may be a very short period of time– from the time that it becomes invasive to the time that it becomes incurable. And, for that reason, what we would like best would be to identify it before it becomes invasive, because then it can be cured by surgery alone, and, does not require chemotherapy. SUSAN DENTZER: Now, let's talk a bit about ovarian cancer and it's a particularly desirable cancer in which to find a very useful biomarker or panel of biomarkers. DR NICOLE URBAN: Well, ovarian cancer– occurs deep inside a woman in her ovaries. And, there is no apparent sign of ovarian cancer. It does not cause symptoms that are specific to ovarian cancer.I would not say there are no symptoms. There are some recent– evidence that there may be symptoms. But, they probably don't occur until the cancer is incurable.