Catching cancer in its earliest stages is one of the most important factors in surviving it. Nipping a tumor in stage 1, before it’s had time to claw its way through the body, is often the best way to give patients a chance at a cure. That’s why dozens of companies have dived into blood-based screening technologies, with the hope of detecting multiple cancers by analyzing free-floating bits of tumor DNA.
The problem, at least so far, is that DNA-based liquid biopsies haven’t lived up to their promise as an early-detection tool, experts told STAT, and many oncologists expressed doubt that they ever will. The tests on the market miss many cancers, and they’re most likely to find tumors in more advanced stages. One major challenge is that the body rapidly degrades circulating tumor DNA in blood, and there is not a lot of cancer DNA in the blood at early disease stages.
That’s leading researchers to turn to a new approach for early cancer detection, making use of nanoscale biological structures that our cells use to take out their garbage — and that are also believed to be important for certain types of cellular communication.
