Breakthrough test for skin patients

BRITISH scientists have developed a blood test which warns when skin cancer has returned to a recovering patient.

Doctors hope the breakthrough will allow them quickly to tackle the disease before it progresses too far, saving thousands of lives.

Malignant melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, is the UK’s fifth most common cancer, with 15,000 people diagnosed a year.

Most patients respond to drug treatment and many start to recover, but their cancer can soon become resistant.

A blood test developed by experts at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute is designed to sound a warning bell for these cases.

Until now doctors have only been able to tell a cancer is resistant and advancing when symptoms return, or scans show a large tumour elsewhere in the body. The new test detects DNA of even small tumours in the blood, giving doctors the chance to act before the cancer is firmly established.

Patients can then be given one of a number of breakthrough immunotherapy drugs which have emerged in the last two years, such as pembrolizumab, nivolumab and ipilimumab.

According to results published today in the journal Cancer Discovery, initial trials on seven advanced melanoma patients showed that the test, which works by tracking mutations in genes, was accurate.

Professor Richard Marais, lead author of the study, said: ‘Using our technique we hope that one day we will be able to spot when a patient’s disease is coming back at the earliest point and start treatment against this much sooner, hopefully giving patients more time with their loved ones.

‘Our work has identified a way for us to do this but we still need to test the approach in further clinical trials.’

Professor Peter Johnson, of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘One of the sinister things about melanoma is that it can lay dormant for years and then suddenly re-emerge, probably as it escapes from the control of the body’s immune system.

He added: ‘ Being able to track cancers in real time as they evolve following treatment has huge potential for the way we monitor cancers and intervene to stop them growing back.

‘There’s still some time until we see this in the clinic but we hope that in the future, blood tests like these will help us to stay one step ahead in treating cancer.’