test, test, Test – as it sounds for weeks in the pandemic, and it could sound, if the cancer diagnosis is your way to the end, you years ago under the Label of “Liquid Biopsy” has entered, and with new remarkable results is paved. The idea is tantalizingly simple: a drop of blood to give, to rule out cancer or to detect the Tumor at least as early, that it can be treated with any prospect of success. This is possible because decay make the end of cancer cells in many cases, already in the first stages of growth with their bare, faulty genetic material and, often, very specific proteins into the blood and thus betrayed. In theory, anyway.
Joachim Müller-Jung
editor in the features section, responsible for the area of “nature and science”.
F. A. Z. Twitter
In practice, the PR scandal has shown to the Heidelberg-based blood test for the early detection of breast cancer, how quickly desire and reality in the clinical practice can drift, if the competition is clouding the minds and work to do will see. What was the women are already as a tangible test of luck, and to this day it lies unfinished on the work bench of the “Hot-Screen”-laboratories. The demands on the accuracy are huge, who would want to in the case of cancer, also with the possibility of a false test result accept? The Heidelberg-based blood test is still being worked on, as is. However, the first brilliant stage wins go to the competition, you want to cut out the clumsy PR maneuver at the time. The American “CancerSEEK”Test, in front of four years of high-profile cancer researchers such as Bert Vogelstein presented for the first time, had as a multi-cancer test, significant weaknesses with regard to the accuracy of the forecasts. The announcement was that they wanted to find less than eight cancer types – ovarian cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and breast cancer – even in asymptomatic patients. And at a reasonable price: $ 500. And that was another Argument: Even in the case of the cancer types such as breast and colon cancer, for which early detection programs are less than detected one-third of the tumors really early.
in the Meantime, the blood test by doctors at the Johns Hopkins University, in a as it is, the first reality test has been tested to 10 000 women between the ages of 65 and 75 years. However, he was combined in the “Science” presented in the “Detect-A”study with a PET-CT scan, in order to get at the unclear Positive-Found more security in the diagnosis. Conclusion the patients the study: the combination of the number of early diagnoses could be doubled from 25 per cent, with the usual Screening to 52 percent. Two-thirds of the tumors were discovered prior to metastasis. The accuracy varied still considerably depending on the type of cancer, false positive test results but with an unprecedented specificity of more than 99.6 percent, in the combined method, apparently, is greatly reduced.
