People often have differing opinions on a lot of things.
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But I think there’s one thing that we can definitely all agree on: cancer is a horrible disease.
Most, if not all, of us will have lost friends or family members to cancer. It’s one of our biggest killers.
One of the big problems with the disease is that it’s often not diagnosed until it has already progressed a long way. By the time physical symptoms appear, the cancer can be quite advanced, and really difficult to treat.
Diagnosing disease earlier can mean that there is a better chance of an effective treatment.
For a long time, scientists have been working on ways to try and identify cancerous cells early on in the disease – and now researchers at the University of Queensland might have made a breakthrough.
We don’t have a blood test for cancer right now. But studies like this give me hope that, within my lifetime, we might.
And it’s much simpler than anyone probably expected.
The team have reported that they can detect the presence of cancer through a simple blood test.
To understand how this test might work, let’s quickly first talk about what cancer is.
Cancer occurs when our cells start to grow in an uncontrolled way. Usually growth and division of our cells is a process that is strictly regulated – cells only divide when they need to, to replace damaged or old cells.
But in cancer, changes to the DNA of cells means that they no longer stick to this program – they go rogue, and start dividing when they shouldn’t.
The team of scientists at UQ decided to take advantage of the fact that cancerous cells have these changes to their DNA. Because their DNA is different, this can be used to identify them.
The cool thing they’ve found is that DNA from cancerous cells sticks to gold nanoparticles, while DNA from non-cancerous cells doesn’t. The gold particles that they use change colour when DNA sticks to them, so you can visually see whether or not DNA from cancerous cells is present.
So if there is DNA from cancerous cells in your blood, then this test can find it. Pretty amazing!
Although this study looks really promising, there is a lot more work needed before you’ll be able to waltz into the doctor’s office and ask to be tested.
First of all, the test only identifies the presence of cancer – but it can’t tell you where that cancer is. So a positive result might let you know that you have cancerous cells, but finding out where they are could still be a bit like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
There’s also a lot more work to be done in testing how accurate the method is.
The original study had only a relatively small number of samples to work with, so it needs to be tested on more people. And it’s not really clear yet how much cancerous DNA needs to be present in order to give a positive result.
We don’t have a blood test for cancer right now.
But studies like this give me hope that, within my lifetime, we might.
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