Blood test development
Final results from a study of a blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer have shown that it is accurate enough to be rolled out as a multi-cancer screening test among people at higher risk of the disease, including patients aged 50 years or older, without symptoms.
In a paper published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology today (Friday), researchers report that the test accurately detected cancer, often before any symptoms arose, while having a very low false positive rate. The test also predicted where in the body the cancer is located with a high degree of accuracy, which could help doctors choose effective diagnostic tests.
GRAIL, Inc. (California, USA), the company developing and funding the research, has now made the multi-cancer early detection test available in the USA by prescription only, and to complement other, existing screening methods such as those for breast, cervical, prostate, lung and bowel cancers. Many of the cancers that the test is capable of detecting do not have screening tests available, such as liver, pancreatic and oesophageal cancers, which are among the most deadly and where early detection could make a real difference.
