new marker

There has been another potential breakthrough in the ongoing worldwide effort to find an effective way to diagnose mesothelioma earlier. Malignant pleural mesothelioma is a fast-growing cancer of the mesothelium.  As with all cancers, early detection can greatly improve the odds of survival.  But because the early symptoms can be mild or mimic other lung diseases, mesothelioma is often not definitively diagnosed until its later stages, when treatment may be less effective. Now, a team of Austrian doctors has identified a cellular protein that they say may be a promising diagnostic marker for mesothelioma. Elevated levels of serum integrin-linked kinase, a protein associated with multiple cellular functions, have already been found in cases of ovarian cancer.  To test its presence in mesothelioma…