Researchers working at John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD have demonstrated a proof of concept for detecting cancer through a blood test. Realizing that tumours often shed cells into the blood and/or tumour DNA may be found in the blood, they decided to search for this DNA by looking for substantally altered chromosomes that almost invariably appear with cancer. They tested their hypothesis by comparing the blood of ten patients with advanced cancer and ten healthy patients by using next-generation DNA sequencing methods. All of the patients with cancer were found to have had DNA with chromosomal abnormalities, but none of the healthy patients were found to have chromosomal abnormalities, some of which could be specifically targeted with existing drugs. The cancer patients were found to have tumour DNA in the blood ranging from 47.9% down to 1.4%. However, the sequencing was very expensive and took a month to complete, som before this can become a practical form of screeningm the cost has to come down, the speed has to increase, and the sensitivity has to be able to detect the tumour DNA in portions less that 0.1% of the blood.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/11/a-step-toward-a-universal-cancer.html?ref=hp
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