A simple blood test to detect 'solid' cancers?

timesofindia ^ | Apr 7, 2014, 04.55 PM IST

[BenLurkin]

Researchers at Stanford University have designed a new technique that may soon make this a reality.

Tumours are called 'solid' or 'liquid' based on where in the body they grow.

More than 80 percent of all cancers are caused by solid tumours that grow as a mass of cells in particular organ, tissue or gland.

The new technique called CAPP-Seq (cancer personalised profiling by deep sequencing) is sensitive enough to detect just one molecule of tumour DNA in a sea of 10,000 healthy DNA molecules in the blood.

[KoRn]

I wonder how long ‘Cancer’ has been with us humans. I’m sure we’ve had it for our entire existence, but it likely went unidentified. The perceived increase of Cancer during recent decades is likely due to better detection and simply a case of people living long enough to get it, not dying of something else first. I believe I read somewhere that statistically, if a male lives long enough, Colon Cancer WILL BE what eventually kills him. Though we all know what statistics can mean.

[jiggyboy]

From about three weeks ago:

Researchers have discovered the earliest confirmed case of cancer in a young man who lived in ancient Egypt.

The discovery of a diseased skeleton dating back to around 1,200 BC was made at the Amara West site in northern Sudan.

The new finding suggests that the disease has its roots in the distant past.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26627941

[jiggyboy]

I wonder if that’s the molecule that some dogs smell when they get freaky around somebody that does indeed have cancer.

[Neidermeyer]

As to dogs and cancer ,, 50% of dogs that live to 10 or more years will get cancer of some type... I’ve lost 2 dogs over the years to cancer ,, one was quite young,, maybe 4 , leukemia ... and another was only 12 ,, had tumors pop up in multiple organs..

That cancer ripping protein from tobacco plants sounds like a winner ... I’ve been hearing of other very promising treatments..