A Step Towards A Cancer Free Society
Prevention is better than cure, but sometimes early cure also saves the day when prevention fails, speaking of which researches made a recent development in the field of cancer detection which has the capability of detecting it years early than traditional testing procedures.
A team of Chinese researchers developed a non-invasive test “PanSeer” capable of detecting cancer in 95% of individuals who lack symptoms but could later receive a cancer diagnosis.
According to the team, five types of cancer can be detected through a DNA methylation-based blood test up to four years before conventional diagnosis. This means that cancer can effectively be predicted by this method and any preventive cure can be performed to make sure the problem doesn’t compound. Tests like that are known as liquid biopsies and are capable of detecting cancer even which are missed by other primitive methods.
The team collected blood plasma samples from individuals from China between 2007 and 2014 to facilitate the development of the test. Around 414 participants remained cancer-free for at least five years after their blood sample was taken and 191 patients were diagnosed with lung, colorectal, liver, stomach, or oesophagal cancer within 4 years after the sample collection. around 223 samples were also collected from patients already diagnosed with one of the five cancers.
Further analysis revealed that PanSeer detected cancer in 95%
of participants who were not diagnosed with cancer before but developed it later. The test came out to be 96% accurate. There is a catch however, even though the test predicted cancer accurately in 95% of the subjects, it was unable to predict the type of cancer. The research confirmed that methylation-based assays can detect cell-free circulating DNA and paved a way for the test to become a basis for screening tests for cancer.
The cancer types which can be detected by the method are lung, colorectal, liver, stomach, or oesophageal cancer. While these may not be the most popular cancer ‘varients’, this is surely a step in the right direction.
The best part about this whole fiasco is the medical development of the field that is most dreaded in the whole world. Cancer sure has killed countless and affected an even greater number of people but the fight is strong and going. Humanity has to win in the end!
EndNote:
Studies like these have the potential to secure the future of mankind, enabling we sapiens to save lives claimed by deadly cancer, still, we might be several years away from developing a secure and reliable test like this and making them even more reliable and available for the masses economically.
