Cancer treatments have better outcomes if the disease is caught early, but unfortunately symptoms often don’t present until later. A new Oxford study demonstrates an experimental blood
test that shows promise in detecting a variety of cancers in patients, and even whether or not they’ve spread.
Being able to go into a doctor’s office for a routine blood
test to check for cancer would save countless lives, so of course the idea has attracted much scientific study. Different
tests have searched for different biomarkers associated with cancer, such as elevated levels of certain proteins, DNA mutations, RNA profiles of blood platelets, damage to white blood cells, or DNA methylation patterns.
The new Oxford
test takes a different tack, instead hunting for blood metabolites, small molecules that are produced as a result of metabolic processes. These can be detected using a technique called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolomics, which examines blood samples using magnetic fields and radio waves.
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