Dr Jeanne Tie Outlines How a Blood Test Can Detect Early Stages of Cancer

A new blood test being worked on can detect 8 common cancer types in a way that is less invasive than other tests, said Jeanne Tie, MBChB, FRACP, MD, medical oncologist and associate professor at the Walter+Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

Transcript

You are working on a blood test that could detect early stages of cancer. How does the test work and how is it advanced beyond current tests that are already in use?

So, the CancerSEEK blood test is a combination of circulating tumor DNA analysis—so using genotyping in patients' blood—in addition to protein bar marker in the blood to detect 8 common cancer types. What we’ve shown is that this blood test can detect up to about maybe 70% to 80% of current, common cancer types that doesn’t have available screening method.

What it offers is that because it is a simple blood test it is much less invasive than other screening tests such as fecal occult blood is for bowel cancer. The blood test can also locate the tumor type to top 2 location which will allow clinicians then to focus the subsequent investigation such as [computerized tomography] scan or gastropexy based on the blood test result.

Obviously, it is a proof of concept study, so it isn’t until randomized trial can demonstrate in a general, noncancer population that this blood test can pick up cancer and compared to not doing the blood test, I don’t think it’s ready to be used in the clinic, but it is certainly a first step towards a very exciting era.