Scientists hail single blood test for cancer

A NEW blood test for cancer was being hailed yesterday as the Holy Grail in the battle to beat the killer disease.

The procedure developed in America had a 70 per cent success rate in its initial trial on 1,005 patients.

This ranged from 98 per cent for ovarian cancer to a low of 33 per cent for breast tumours.

It is capable of screening for eight common forms of cancer – the others being liver, stomach, pancreatic, oesophagus, lung and colorectal cancers.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore say it is a potential game changer that would enable early diagnoses in patients, leading to better chances of survival without the need for intrusive investigations.

Exciting

British oncologists greeted the announcment as “enormously exciting” and “of massive potential”.

Tumours release tiny traces of their mutated DNA and proteins into the bloodstream.

The test, which the research team has called Cancer-SEEK, looks for mutations in 16 genes and evaluates the levels of eight proteins usually released by cancer sufferers.

Professor of oncology Bert Vogelstein said that although the test does not spot every cancer, it identifies many cancers that would likely otherwise go undetected.

He said: “Many of the most promising cancer treatments we have today only benefit a small minority of cancer patients, and we consider them major breakthroughs.

“This test represents the next step in changing the focus of cancer research from late-stage disease to early disease, which I believe will be critical to reducing cancer deaths in the long term.”

The initial cost is less than £360 a patient, about the price of a colonoscopy – and that would drop over time.

The next step is more trials to refine the technique and assess its effectiveness for early stage and pre-symptomatic disease. Consultant Dr Gert Attard, of London’s Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This is of massive potential. I’m enormously excited. This is the Holy Grail – a blood test to diagnose cancer without all the other procedures like scans or colonoscopy.”

The four major killers remain breast, bowel, lung and prostate cancer, according to Cancer Research UK. Some 284 out of every 100,000 people who die each year in Britain are victims – about 162,000 people.

Prof Richard Marais, of Cancer Research UK, estimated it would take at least five to six years to prove that the practice worked effectively.

The findings were published in the journal Science.