Blood Test to Detect Cancer

'Exciting' blood test spots cancer a year early.

                           

Doctors have spotted cancer coming back up to a year before normal scans in an "exciting" discovery.

 

The UK team was able to scour the blood for signs of cancer while it was just a tiny cluster of cells invisible to X-ray or CT scans.
It should allow doctors to hit the tumour earlier and increase the chances of a cure.
They also have new ideas for drugs after finding how unstable DNA fuels rampant cancer development.
The research project was on lung cancer, but the processes studied are so fundamental that they should apply across all cancer types.

    

Lung cancer kills more people than any other type of tumour and the point of the study is to track how it can "evolve" into a killer that spreads through the body.

Blood test

In order to test for cancer coming back, doctors need to know what to look for.
In the trial, funded by Cancer Research UK, samples were taken from the lung tumour when it was removed during surgery.
A team at the Francis Crick Institute, in London, then analysed the tumour's defective DNA to build up a genetic fingerprint of each patient's cancer.
Then blood tests were taken every three months after the surgery to see if tiny traces of cancer DNA re-emerged.
The results, outlined in the journal Nature, showed cancer recurrence could be detected up to a year before any other method available to medicine.
The tumours are thought to have a volume of just 0.3 cubic millimetres when the blood test catches them.

Irish scientists developing bowel cancer blood tests

A simple and cheap blood test for bowel cancer, which has been developed by Irish-based scientists, could be available for widespread use as early as next year.

The test, which will search for biomarkers generated when bowel cancer starts to develop, promises to be more accurate and sensitive than existing tests.

It is being developed by scientists at the DCU-based Biomedical Diagnostics Institute in partnership with biomedical company Randox Technologies.

It is expected the new test could cost as little as €25.

Because it uses a small amount of blood it is less invasive than existing bowel cancer tests, and it is therefore leading to hopes that it may encourage more people to volunteer to be screened for the disease.

The current national bowel screening programme for those aged 60-69 has had a low uptake.

This is thought to be in part because it involves testing stool samples. Such testing is also considered slow and not entirely reliable.

Survival rates from bowel cancer are higher when the disease is caught early, after a formal diagnosis involving colonoscopy.

It is hoped the new test could lead to earlier diagnosis and a reduced need to send patients for further investigation via colonoscopy.

Bowel cancer is the second most common cause of death from cancer in Ireland.

2,500 people are diagnosed with it each year and 1,000 die from it.

The collaboration is funded by Enterprise Ireland and Randox. 

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