One blood test that detects 50 cancer types before symptoms appear

One fact about cancer is that it is treatable – provided – it is found early and can also turn terminal and painful if it metastasizes. Detection in time has been the silver bullet mankind has been searching for the king of maladies.

Cancer.net lists at list 120 types of cancer. Tests for most types of cancer are often expensive, invasive, not available at all medical facilities.

Now, in the UK, the NHS doctors have (since Monday 13 September) begun using a “revolutionary” blood test to spot more than 50 cancers earlier. The Galleri process is particularly good at detecting hard-to-diagnose tumours including bowel and pancreatic cancers. The NHS-Galleri trial is being run by the Cancer Research UK and King’s College London Cancer Prevention Trials Unit in partnership with the health service and healthcare company GRAIL, which developed the test technique.

The Galleri Process: The world’s largest clinical trial:

• About 140,000 people are joining the clinical trials
• The test is said to hunt down and highlight fragments of tumour DNA.
• It can even pinpoint the likely location of the disease.
• Hopefully will catch far more cases at an early stage of growth
• It has been found that treatment is more likely to be successful when begun early

How will this test be carried out?

1. Patients are being recruited from several areas of England.
2. Literally, thousands of people between the ages of 50 to 77 will be contacted and invited to take part.
3. It will be ensured that the total number of patients come from different backgrounds and ethnicities
4. The condition is that they must not have had a cancer diagnosis in the last three years.
5. They must attend a mobile clinic sited in retail parks and at other convenient locations.
6. They must provide blood samples three times over the following two years.

How this test will help:

Cancer at Stage 1 or 2 has potential treatments that are less aggressive. Patients whose cancer has been detected at the earliest stage have a five to 10 times better chance of surviving compared with those who are diagnosed late at Stage 4.

Patients will find out they are in the test group if Galleri flags up possible cancer, in which case they will be sent to the hospital to undergo further checks. Initial results of the learning from and the efficacy of the method (as per these clinical trials) are expected by 2023. If they are successful, Galleri will be rolled out to a further one million people in 2024 and 2025.