No Biopsy Needed: Cancer Diagnosis Using Just A Drop Of Blood

Sunday, April 12, 2009 - 21:07 in Health & Medicine

A drop of blood or a chunk of tissue smaller than the period at the end of this sentence may one day be all that is necessary to diagnose cancers and assess their response to treatment, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In a Nature Medicine study, the scientists used a specialized machine capable of analyzing whether individual cancer-associated proteins were present in the tiny samples and even whether modifications of the proteins varied in response to cancer treatments. Although the study focuses on blood cancers, the hope is that the technique might also provide a faster, less invasive way to track solid tumors. read more

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