Possible blood test for colon cancer

But Wang, his graduate student Jared Nesvet and Uri Ladabaum, a professor of medicine, may have at least a possible solution: a blood test to detect colorectal cancer, which in principle would be less expensive, less invasive and more convenient than colonoscopies and other current tests, the researchers said. Wang and Nesvet have already developed a test that works in the controlled environment of a materials science lab, and now, with help from a Stanford ChEM-H seed grant, the trio are working to validate their approach in the real world of clinical medicine. Such a test was certainly possible, Wang, Nesvet and Ladabaum realized, because even early in the development of colorectal cancers, genes from dead tumor cells appear in the bloodstream.

Source: news.stanford.edu