cancer Alert awareness

Test hope for early cancer alert

Chicago, June 5: Cancer care will be revolutionized by blood tests that can detect relapses within days and spot tumors in healthy people up to a decade before the first symptoms appear: scientists have said.

            The tests can find growths while they are still as small as a pinhead during check-ups smokers, the over-50s or people with a family history of cancer.

            This would allow surgeons to operate early on the patient. Some researchers claim that the screening tests could cut the number of cancer deaths by as much as 40 percent in the near term, rising to 90 percent if the devices reach maximum sensitivity.

            The tests, which are known as liquid biopsies and flag up tiny fragments of tumour DNA that leak into the blood-stream as cancer cells die, cou8ld become a part of routine health checks within five years, according to one academic.

            Others believe that it will take longer to overcome a host of technical challenges and say that for now the method is better suited to tracking the progress of caners after treatment.

            Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are among the investors who have poured $100 million of funding into Grail, a Silicon Valley start-up that has said it will bring a prototype to market in 2019.

            A Grail-funded study presented over the weekend at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual conference showed that a new kind of liquid biopsy designed to minimise false alarms found 89 percent of tumours in patients with advanced lung, breast and prostate cancer.

            Another American company, Guardant Health, has announced a clinical trial that will aim to detect the first hints of cancer in thousands of patients known to have inherited genes that put them at risk of the disease.

                                                                                                                                                The times, London