Liquid Biopsy Scientists say 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.

Washington, January 3
In what may pave the way for personalised treatment for cancer patients, scientists claim to have developed a blood test that can detect even a single tumour cell that could lead to the disease.

A team in Boston, which has developed the test, says the studies using the experimental test will start this year, with support from global healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, before it’s being marketed worldwide.

According to the scientists, the test could detect many types of cancer, mainly breast, prostate, colon and lung.

“This is like a liquid biopsy that avoids painful tissue sampling and may give a better way to monitor patients than periodic imaging scans,” the media quoted Daniel Haber, chief of Massachusetts General Hospital’s cancer centre and one of the test’s inventors.

According to the scientists, the blood test uses a microchip that resembles a laboratory slide covered in 78,000 tiny posts, like bristles on hairbrush, coated with antibodies that bind to tumour cells.

When blood is forced across the chip, cells ping off the posts like balls in a pinball machine. The cancer cells stick, and stains make them glow so researchers can count and capture them for study, say the scientists.

“The test can find one cancer cell in a billion or more healthy cells,” said Mehmet Toner, a Harvard University bioengineer who helped design it.

The findings have been published in the latest edition of the “Nature” journal. — PTI