A blood test so sensitive that it can spot a single cancer cell lurking among a billion healthy ones is moving one step closer to your doctor’s office.
Boston scientists who invented the test, are joining forces with Johnson & Johnson, to bring this test to the market. Four big cancer centers, including the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, will also start studies using the experimental test this year.
Many doctors believe that stray cancer cells in the blood mean that a tumor has spread, or is likely to. Doctors want to use the new test to try and predict what treatments would be best for each patient’s tumor and find out quickly if they are working.
One of the test’s inventor’s, Dr. Daniel Haber, chief of Massachusetts General Hospital’s cancer center, said the test “is like a liquid biopsy that avoids painful tissue sampling and may give a better way to monitor patients than periodic imaging scans.”
Ultimately the test may offer a way to screen for cancer besides the mammograms, colonoscopies and other methods used now.
The only test on the market now to find tumor cells in blood gives a cell count but does not capture whole cells that doctors can analyze to choose treatments.
The test uses a lab slide-like microchip covered with 78,000 tiny, specially treated posts, like bristles on a hairbrush. The cancer cells stick, and stains make them glow so researchers can study them.
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