DECRYPTION – A study has detected cancer in apparently healthy people.
Finding cancer long before it does damage: a holy grail for oncology research. This would have multiple benefits. Diagnosed at an early stage, cancer is potentially “easier” to treat, with lighter and more effective treatments, but also less costly for the community. This is the whole point of organized screenings, which are aimed at people at risk of cancer, but not sick, such as screening for breast cancer or that (under experimentation) of lung cancer.
But not all cancers are screened for, either because they are not frequent enough, or because current techniques are not efficient enough. For the past ten years, research has therefore been working to develop tools which, through minimally invasive procedures, can detect cancers earlier and earlier. At the end of the 1980s, tests began to appear that searched the blood for specific markers of…