New blood test can detect a wide range of cancer types
In the middle of the Corona, with the crisis in cancer research, a breakthrough was reported: A new blood test was able to detect over 50 different types of cancer with high accuracy and the location of the tumors in the body to uncover.
Under the guidance of the renowned non-Profit organizations, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, USA, an international research team developed a blood test that is able to detect over 50 types of cancer and their origin in the body view. The cancer test was recently presented in the journal “Annals of Oncology”.
A breakthrough in the early detection of cancer
In a study that involved thousands of Participants, was able to establish a new blood test more than 50 types of cancer as well as their localization in the body with high accuracy. The research team of the world’s highly-recognized institutions to the Test, a new key role in the early detection of cancer. Early detection, in turn, is of crucial importance in the treatment of cancer.
The special feature of the Test is that among the types of cancer which can be detected by the Test, some especially dangerous forms, for which there is as yet no standard procedures for early detection.
How does the Test work?
The Test makes use of the latest findings from genetics, to analyze the arrangement of chemical units in the DNA of cancer cells. These units are referred to as methyl groups. These groups adhere to certain sections of DNA and control whether genes are active or inactive.
In cancer cells, the arrangement of these methyl groups, however, differs significantly from normal cells. The pattern of these groups provide an accurate indication of what the cancer disease is. When cancer cells die, drained of their DNA, together with the attached methyl groups into the blood, where they can then be used by the new Test measured.
A Test for all
“Our previous Work showed that methylation-based Tests outperform the traditional DNA-sequencing approaches to the detection of multiple forms of cancer in blood samples,” explains Dr. Geoffrey Oxnard of Dana-Faber Institute, together with Dr. med. Minetta Liu, of the Mayo Clinic, led the study. The current results suggest that this Test is a practical method to examine people on a variety of different types of cancer.
What are the types of cancer the Test detects?
In the study, the researchers used the Test to analyze 6.689 blood samples. Of 2,482 samples came from persons who had known cancer. In addition, 4.207 samples of human were examined, in which no cancer was diagnosed. Among the samples of the cancer patients more than 50 types of cancer were represented, including:
How accurate is the Test?
In the study, the Test was able to detect the types of cancer with an accuracy of 99.3 percent. In 0.7 percent of cases, the Presence of diagnosed of a cancer disease was mistakenly. In addition, the Test was able to detect more than 90 percent of the cases correctly, which Organ or which tissue is affected by cancer.
The Test still needs to be on a broader level checked
“Our results show that this approach can detect for the examination of cell-free DNA in the blood of a broad spectrum of cancer types in virtually any stage of the disease, the specificity and sensitivity reached to almost the same level, this is for a Screening at the population level,” says Oxnard. In a subsequent study, should be the blood test to the other Participants tested, primarily to people with an increased risk of cancer, to investigate the reliability and to improve. (vb)
