New Four-Marker Blood Test Catches 87.5% of Early Pancreatic Cancers

Primary Care Perspective - Texas Edition | Wednesday, February 4, 2026

Strategic intelligence for independent primary care physicians in Texas.

Opening Insight

NIH-backed researchers have validated a four-analyte blood panel that detected 87.5% of stage I and II pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma at just a 5% false-positive rate-potentially transforming your ability to catch one of medicine’s deadliest cancers when surgery can still save lives. For Texas primary care physicians managing the state’s aging population and elevated cancer burden, this breakthrough moves pancreatic cancer screening from “impossible” to “actionable” in your panel workflows.

What’s Happening

National Institutes of Health-supported researchers published findings in Clinical Cancer Research demonstrating that a four-marker blood test combining CA19-9 and THBS2 with ANPEP and PIGR achieved 91.9% overall discrimination for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Most significantly for frontline physicians, the panel caught 87.5% of stage I and II cancers-the only stages where five-year survival exceeds single digits-while maintaining a clinically acceptable 5% false-positive rate.

Pancreatic cancer remains the third-leading cause of cancer death in the United States despite representing only 3% of diagnoses, precisely because 80-85% of cases are diagnosed at advanced stages when surgical resection is no longer possible. Current screening relies heavily on imaging for high-risk populations, leaving average-risk patients-who represent the majority of cases-without any early detection pathway. The four-analyte panel represents the first blood-based test with sufficient sensitivity and specificity for potential population-level screening or targeted use in primary care settings.

The biomarker combination improves on CA19-9 alone, which has long been used for monitoring known pancreatic cancer but lacks the sensitivity for screening. By pairing it with thrombospondin-2 (THBS2), aminopeptidase N (ANPEP), and polymeric immunoglobulin receptor (PIGR), researchers created a panel that captures different biological pathways involved in early tumor development and immune response, dramatically improving early-stage detection rates.

Why This Matters for Texas Independents

Texas faces a growing pancreatic cancer burden driven by the state’s rapidly aging population, high obesity rates, and significant Hispanic population-all established risk factors. With Texas ranking among the states with lowest rates of cancer screening adherence, adding a simple blood draw to existing lipid panels or metabolic workups could dramatically improve early detection without requiring separate appointments or patient education campaigns about yet another screening modality.

For independent practices competing against hospital-employed groups and retail clinics across Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, offering cutting-edge cancer screening creates a powerful differentiation point. United Healthcare and BCBS Texas-which dominate your commercial payer mix-are increasingly covering emerging biomarker panels as evidence builds, and being an early adopter positions your practice as the sophisticated primary care option that doesn’t require specialist referral for risk assessment.

The state’s large uninsured population and lack of Medicaid expansion makes low-cost, high-yield screening even more critical. A $200-400 blood test that catches cancer at a curable stage delivers exponentially more value than late-stage diagnosis followed by futile chemotherapy costing hundreds of thousands. For your self-pay and high-deductible patients, this represents affordable, actionable prevention rather than aspirational care they’ll never access. Rural Texas practices, already struggling with specialist access, could use this panel to identify the 10-15% of patients who genuinely need expedited gastroenterology or oncology referral versus watchful waiting.

Your Action Items This Week

1. Contact your reference lab representatives (Quest, LabCorp, Sonic Healthcare) to ask when the four-marker PDAC panel will be available as an orderable test, what the CPT codes will be, and what the anticipated commercial payer coverage looks like-getting on their “interested physician” list ensures you’ll be notified at launch and may qualify for pilot pricing.

2. Identify your high-risk pancreatic cancer cohort now using EMR filters for patients over 50 with new-onset diabetes (within past 2-3 years), chronic pancreatitis history, family history of pancreatic cancer, or BRCA mutations, so you’re ready to offer targeted screening the moment the test becomes clinically available rather than scrambling to build lists later.

3. Review your current cancer screening rates for colonoscopy, mammography, and lung CT to establish baseline performance metrics-if you’re achieving less than 60% compliance on established screenings, focus on workflow fixes there first before adding a new screening modality; if you’re above 75%, you have the operational maturity to successfully implement emerging cancer detection protocols.

Source

“Researchers identify new blood markers that may detect early pancreatic cancer” - National Institutes of Health

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