A ground-breaking new blood test that can detect eight common types of cancer before they spread will save countless lives, reports The Guardian. Scientists believe that the ‘liquid biopsy’ – developed in the US – will be a game-changer in the fight against cancer, and hope it could be widely available within a few years.
The report says the test was able to detect tumours about 70% of the time on average in more than 1,000 patients with early-stage cancer. Crucially, it did so before the cancers had spread, giving patients the best chance of beating the disease.
It works by looking for mutated DNA that dying cells shed into the blood, and protein biomarkers associated with bowel, breast, liver, lung, oesophageal, ovarian, pancreatic and stomach cancer. ….more