Blood test detects cancer early

A research project on lung cancer has led to an ‘exciting’ discovery in which doctors claim to be able to spot cancer coming back up to a year before normal scans.

In a blood test trial funded by Cancer Research UK, doctors were 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. Upon detection, it is hoped that doctors will be able to hit the tumour earlier, therefore increasing the chances of a cure.

The process saw samples taken from the lung tumour when it was removed during surgery and then the defective DNA analysed to generate a genetic fingerprint of each patient's cancer. Blood tests were then taken every three months after the surgery to see if tiny traces of cancer DNA re-emerged.

Published in the journal Nature, the results highlighted that cancer recurrence could be detected up to a year before any other method available to medicine. To date, it has been an early warning system for 13 out of 14 patients whose illness recurred, as well as providing others an all-clear.

Dr Christopher Abbosh, from the UCL Cancer Institute, said: "We can identify patients to treat even if they have no clinical signs of disease, and also monitor how well therapies are working. This represents new hope for combating lung cancer relapse following surgery, which occurs in up to half of all patients."

While the research project was focused on lung cancer, it is believed that the processes studied are so fundamental that they should apply across all cancer types.