According to new research published in the scientific journal, a new blood test can detect several types of cancer years earlier than possible with traditional screening methods. Nature’s Communications. Early detection of cancer has the potential to significantly decrease death rates from the disease. Scientists have tried for years to develop a cancer screening test that reliably detects malignant potential before tumor cells have a chance to spread, making the treatment more effective. But until today, most of the attempts were unsuccessful or had partial results at best. Developed by a Chinese-American startup, the innovative new blood test is known as PanSeer. It was developed by an international team of scientists from the University of California, who were able to successfully diagnose five different types of cancer long before symptoms appeared in the patients they evaluated. The five cancers that PanSeer can detect today are stomach cancer, esophageal cancer, bowel cancer, lung cancer, and liver cancer, all of which are quite common. The test is based on a technique that was developed over a decade and allows the detection of malignant tumors in their early stages, which have not yet caused any symptoms and therefore could not be detected by the above methods. Previous detection methods generally involved researchers collecting blood samples from people already diagnosed with the disease. The new study, on the other hand, included a 10-year health survey conducted between 2007 and 2017 that took blood samples from more than 120,000 healthy people in China, collecting samples from people before they showed signs of cancer. The detection technique is based on a biological process called DNA methylation analysis, which detects specific DNA signatures for different types of cancer and identifies the locations that are most likely to indicate the presence of cancer. Then a special algorithm compiles the findings and presents an indication of the probability that a person will develop the disease. “What we show is: up to four years before these people enter the hospital, there are already signatures in their blood that show they have cancer,” says Kun Zhang, a bioengineer at the University of California, San Diego, and a co – author of the study. “That has never been done before.” The test was able to detect early signs of cancer in 95% of the 605 patients who showed no symptoms when tested, but developed cancer up to four years later. The researchers hope that PanSeer or a similar blood test will become a standard annual test, but they noted that more more in-depth studies need to be done before that happens.
