Veridex, a Johnson & Johnson company, is getting together with Massachusetts General Hospital to develop a blood test so sensitive that it can "spot a single cancer cell lurking among a billion healthy ones," according to an Associated Press report.
The test will check for circulating tumor cells, which are cancer cells that have detached from the tumor and are found at low levels in the bloodstream. According to DailyFinance, Veridex is the only company to have brought CTC technology to the U.S. market with its CellSearch in-vitro diagnostic test. But CellSearch cannot help predict what treatments would be best for each patient's tumor and find out quickly if they are working. That's what this new technology will be able to do--a kind of "liquid biopsy" that avoids painful tissue sampling, according to Dr. Daniel Haber, chief of Massachusetts General Hospital's cancer center and one of the test's inventors.
Ultimately, the test may offer alternative ways to screen for cancer, according to researchers. "There's a lot of potential here, and that's why there's a lot of excitement," Dr. Mark Kris, lung cancer chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, told the AP.
- see the Veridex release
- get the AP report
- read more from DailyFinance
- and read more about CellSearch from Veridex