Development of a new blood test that can reduce cancer fatality

According to the Statistical Office of Korea, cancer took the first place in the list of the causes of death for most of the last 37 years. The list mostly consisted of diseases such as heart disease, pneumonia, and brain disease. The reason why cancer is the most dangerous disease is because of the difficulty to detect the symptoms and the limitation of treatment. The treatments that already exist can only cure cancer that is detected early. Therefore, it is important to spot cancer as soon as possible before a tumor spreads all over the body.
The Medical Xpress, one of the news media of health and medical, reported that the Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center has discovered a new technology that could detect cancer. This technology works via a blood test called “Liquid biopsy” and it can spot eight different kinds of cancer in one blood test. Normally, people need to take an endoscope1) or scan the body through computed tomography (CT). These methods are uncomfortable and bothersome ways of diagnosis. However, the newly developed technology made the process way more convenient. This test is called CancerSEEK, and it can detect cancer with 70 percent accuracy. The new test was introduced as the way of detecting cancer with 70 percentage of accuracy which is higher than the existing tests. Research teams have announced that there are several ways of testing cancer using blood. The first technique is finding a substance released from the cancer cells in the blood. The second way is using the difference of nucleus between normal cells and cancer cells. In the nucleus of a normal cell, DNA is well kept unlike the nucleus of a cancer cell which is damaged because of damaged DNA strands.
Not only can CancerSEEK determine whether a person has cancer or not, it can also find which organ the tumor has originated from. When a cell dies, DNA comes out of the cell nucleus and flows through the body within the blood. This DNA is called cell-free DNA (cfDNA). The research team assumed and proved that cfDNAs from cancer cells have a damaged form, which also differs in pattern depending on which organ it originated from. Due to this result, the pattern of the damaged DNA can help people to find the organ the cancer has originated from.
Due to the development of the cancer test, the number of people who can notice cancer in the early phase is expected to increase. Then, they will be able to be in remission before the tumor spreads more and they will get a chance to live healthier lives.

1) Tubular instrument used to look deep into the body

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