STAT+: Liquid biopsies could help screen for countless cancers. But who should get them?
By the time cancer is discovered, it’s often too late to change its course. Close to half of cancers will already have spread, making death — whether within months, five years, or ten years — a near certainty.
Mammograms, colonoscopies, and other cancer screenings may have caught some. But medicine doesn’t screen for many cancers — though in the future, it’s likely we will be able to with a simple blood draw. Biotech companies are working to develop what are known as liquid biopsies, tests designed to detect dozens of different cancers. Studies suggest some of these tests can even find aggressive cancers when they’re still constrained and likely curable, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Two such tests — made by Grail and StageZero Life Sciences — are already available directly to patients as screening tools.
