Eight cancers can be detected with a simple blood test, also called a liquid biopsy. This discovery was made at the Cancer Research Institute in Cambridge, UK.
Nearly one in six deaths worldwide is linked to cancer according to the world health organization. Preventing them is possible through screening. When cancer is caught early, it can be treated better, but in some cases the tumor needs to be big enough to be spotted.
Researchers from the Cambridge Cancer Research Institute in the UK are perhaps in the process of revolutionizing these screenings. They have developed a blood test that can screen for eight cancers.
Finding traces of brain tumors in the bloodstream is tough. Our scientists are testing techniques that might make this easier: https://t.co/V5vwUJboYI pic.twitter.com/KFN3S7LUPO
— Cancer Research UK (@CR_UK) November 7, 2018
94% of cancers detected
This new screening test tracks the DNA of tumors deep in the blood, it is a liquid biopsy. The trial, the results of which are published in Science Translational Medicine, was encouraging. It makes it easier to find the DNA of tumor cells in deep organs in the blood because the latter’s DNA is shorter than other normal circulating DNA: the test uses this difference in size to identify and analyze first.
In the case of colorectal, bile duct, ovarian, breast and skin cancer, the blood test detected 94% of cancers. For pancreatic, kidney and brain cancer, 65% of cases were detected.
Areas for improvement
However, the test needs to be improved: in 2.5% of cases, it detected cancer when the patient was healthy (“false positive”, which triggered unnecessary explorations. The researchers found that its effectiveness depended on the advanced disease: “one of the limitations at the moment is that we are demonstrating the potential of this test in patients at an advanced stage, but not for samples taken from patients at an earlier stage of the disease”, explains Florent Mouliere, one of the researchers.
For him, the test remains promising, because it highlights a new method that could be applied in other cases of detection of tumors in organs that are difficult or dangerous to explore. For brain cancer, liquid biopsy has a particular interest, it could replace conventional biopsies, which are very risky because doctors have to take tissues from the brain. Brain tumors affect more than 240,000 people in Europe each year.
.
