‘Holy grail’ blood test detects 10 types of cancer years before a person falls ill

A NEW blood test is able to detect 10 types of cancer several years before a person falls ill, scientists say.

The breakthrough was last night hailed as a major step towards the “holy grail” of curing cancer after trials on 1,400 patients found the simple procedure to identify DNA markers worked with up to 90pc accuracy.

It could become available within five years, as experts said the findings could pave the way for an almost universal screening programme that could detect warning signs of disease long before it developed, vastly improving survival chances.

US scientists found the simple test was able to identify genetic traces of cancers, including those that are notoriously hard to detect, such as pancreatic and ovarian disease. The new approach looks for fragments of DNA released into the blood stream by fast-growing cancer cells.

Dr Eric Klein, the lead author, from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, said: “This is potentially the holy grail of cancer research, to find cancers that are hard to cure at an earlier stage when they are easier to cure, and we hope this test could save many lives. Most cancers are detected at a late stage, but this ‘liquid biopsy’ gives us the opportunity to find them months or years before someone would develop symptoms and be diagnosed.”

The results, which will be presented at the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, come from research on more than 1,600 adults, of whom 749 were cancer-free, while 878 had been newly diagnosed with the disease.

The tests found early warning signs in the blood for 10 types of cancer with accuracy of more than 50pc. The best results were for ovarian and pancreatic cancer, at 90pc and 80pc. Four out of five were diagnosed with liver and gall bladder cancers.

For blood cancers lymphoma and myeloma, it was 77pc and 73pc accurate, while correctly diagnosing two-thirds of people with bowel cancer.

The results for triplenegative breast cancer were 58pc.

It was less able to pick up stomach, uterine and early-stage low-grade prostate cancer.

Dr Klein, whose research team also involved Stanford University, said: “Potentially this test could be used for everybody, regardless of their family history. It is several steps away, and more research is needed, but it could be given to healthy adults of a certain age, such as those over 40, to see if they have early signs of cancer.”

The test uses whole genome sequencing, of the type people use to check their family trees. But experts say it is much more sensitive than previous tests. (© Daily Telegraph, London)