Eine neue Blutuntersuchung mit ultra-sensitiver DNA-Sequenzierung könnte drei Jahre vor allen Symptomen Krebstumoren finden | „Drei Jahre zuvor sind Zeit für Interventionen. Die Tumoren sind wahrscheinlich viel weniger fortgeschritten und häufiger heilbar.“

From the article: In recent years, we’ve gotten much better at fighting cancer — if it’s detected early. But some cancers can sneak up and grow for years without showing any symptoms. This is where the new blood test comes in.

Researchers were surprised to see they could detect signs of cancerous tumors in the bloodstream so much earlier.

“Three years earlier provides time for intervention. The tumors are likely to be much less advanced and more likely to be curable,” says lead study author Yuxuan Wang, an assistant professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The [research](https://aacrjournals.org/cancerdiscovery/article-abstract/doi/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-25-0375/762609/Detection-of-cancers-three-years-prior-to?redirectedFrom=fulltext) comes from a team at Johns Hopkins, which analyzed blood samples collected as part of a long-running cardiovascular study called ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities). This study began in the late 1980s to track heart health in thousands of Americans. But the blood samples it gathered over decades are now revealing insights far beyond the heart.

Using ultra-sensitive DNA sequencing, researchers focused on samples from 26 people who developed cancer within six months of giving blood, and 26 matched individuals who did not. They used a test known as a multicancer early detection (MCED) assay, designed to search for tiny fragments of mutated DNA that tumors release into the bloodstream.

At the first time point — just before diagnosis — the MCED test flagged cancer in 8 of the 26 people who got it. That’s not surprising; it’s pretty much what researchers expected. What stunned researchers came next. For six of those eight people, earlier blood samples were also available, drawn more than three years before the cancer diagnosis. In four of those six cases, the team found the same tumor mutations already present.

“These results demonstrate that it is possible to detect circulating tumor DNA more than three years prior to clinical diagnosis, and provide benchmark sensitivities required for this purpose,” the study authors write.