Imagine if a person could simply offer a urine sample instead of experience a painful surgical process to find out if their cancer had been reacting to treatment? It may seem too good to be true, but researchers at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia, have identified fluorescent molecules in urine that may allow patients with malignant melanoma to do just that.1 Their research paper describes a bunch of fluorescent molecules--readily detectable in urine--which correlate with melanoma progression, creating new possibilities for monitoring the disease.
Tracking cancer progression is important as it allows doctors to see if someone is responding to therapy. Currently, malignant melanoma patients require invasive biopsies to diagnose and track the development of the cancer. Using this new approach, doctors could ask patients to provide a urine sample instead, and then fluorescent molecules in the sample could reveal disease progression rapidly and inexpensively.

This technique is badly required as malignant melanoma is particularly challenging to treat and monitor. This skin cancer is highly aggressive and frequently spreads to other websites within the body so tracking its development is very important. However, current techniques mean that patients have to undergo invasive surgery to remove tissue samples and then laboratory technicians must perform expensive and time-consuming analysis of these samples. Unfortunately, patients can avoid getting timely identification and treatment as they fear these invasive procedures.

They focused on particular fluorescent molecules that cancer cells create during metabolic processes involved in their own growth and progression, and which end up in urine.

The researchers analyzed urine samples from patients with malignant melanoma and healthy controls using fluorescence spectroscopy, a simple and inexpensive detection method, to see whether there were any gaps in levels of the fluorescent markers. They also performed genetic analysis for the same patients to test genes involved in melanoma progression.

The urine samples from the cancerous melanoma patients contained different levels of their metabolism-linked fluorescent markers as compared to those from healthy controls. Strikingly, the degrees of the fluorescent molecules in the urine correlated with the point of melanoma and the expression of genes which are linked to melanoma development, indicating that the molecules possess significant potential as biomarkers.

"Our results show that we are able to successfully utilize urine, a simply and non-invasively accumulated biological material, to ascertain the development and treatment response of malignant melanoma," says Špaková. "The results highlight the capacity of'waste metabolites' in monitoring disease. This method is a user friendly and easy technique that could be performed using standard laboratory equipment."

<strong>Reference</strong>

1. Ivana Špaková, Katarína Dubayová, Vladimíra Nagyová, Mária Mareková. Fluorescence biomarkers of malignant melanoma detectable in urine. <em>Open Chemistry</em>, 2020;18(1):898. doi: <span style="color: #ff6600;"><a style="color: #ff6600;" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/chem-2020-0143" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1515/chem-2020-0143</a>.</span>