New test gives hope to cancer sufferers
Updated
A new blood test is being developed which will not only detect 15 per cent of all cancers but will also help in anti cancer treatments for some of the most aggressive cancers.
The test will help in the diagnosis and treatment of mainly bone and brain cancers. Scientists say it's the first major breakthrough for these cancers in 30 years.
Presenter: Brigid Glanville
Speakers: Dr Jeremy Henson, Children's Medical Research Institute; Professor Roger Reddel is the director of the Children's Medical Research Institute
BRIGID GLANVILLE: For patients diagnosed with the most aggressive brain cancers the average survival rate is less than a year. The diagnosis alone can take months and it often involves invasive surgery to take a sample of the tumour.
But now the Children's Medical Research Institute has developed a new blood test which may assist in the early diagnosis of these aggressive cancers. Dr Jeremy Henson is behind the discovery.
JEREMY HENSON: So that is about 15 per cent of all cancers and it's especially cancers like bone cancers, brain cancers, connective tissue cancers and to a lesser degree breast cancer and lung cancer.
With this test it should be possible to do it with just the normal blood test specimen. It should be able to do in much higher volumes and a much faster rate.
BRIGID GLANVILLE: Researchers hope the new test will also lead to new anti-cancer treatments for brain and bone cancers. They're also confident the test will provide more accurate life expectancy for patients.
Professor Roger Reddel is the director of the Children's Medical Research Institute.
ROGER REDDEL: For these types of cancers, we don't have any drugs that specifically attack the mechanism that they use for their long-term survival.
What the development of these tests means now is that we can use it to hugely speed up the rate of searching for new anti-cancer drugs. We should be able to develop it into a form where we can use the test to screen thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of chemicals to see which ones of them are effective against these particular types of cancers.
BRIGID GLANVILLE: Researchers have been working on finding a test which measures the activity of these aggressive cancers for almost a decade. This latest development is being published in the international journal Nature Biotechnology.
Cancer Council New South Wales says this breakthrough is hugely significant for patients with brain tumours or bone cancer. Dr Andrew Penman is the chief executive of the Cancer Council.
ANDREW PENMAN: Well, look, if you look at brain cancers in particular and brain cancer I guess shares several characteristics with those wicked cancers whose survival hasn't improved much in 30 years. In brain cancer, we have only seen really two major advancements in treatment in the last 40 years. This, I think, opens the door to another big leap forward at least for some brain cancers.
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