A Blood Test for Cancer

Since many cancers don’t have symptoms early on, they may go unnoticed until they are at an advanced stage. But that is changing, thanks to a newer, non-invasive tool.

Hosted by: Hank Green

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[AUSAXFAN]

I'm currently working in a clinical laboratory that performs liquid biopsies for cancer patients. I'm pleasantly surprised to see someone with a little more reach talking about this.

[Sileff]

Let's hope this will save many lives. Cancer is terrible.

[flibbertygibbet]

First time I've been surprised to learn that using the word cancer and not specifying the individual cancer is correct. I am a retired oncology RN and I get tired of telling people how there are many cancers that all have different pathologies and treatments. I doubt there will ever be one cure for cancer but I hope someday there will be one for every type of cancer.

[Thebreakdownshow]

This is very positive news cancer is something that has impacted my family for generations.

[angeliquenichelle]

When I had my thyroid biopsy it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. I wasn’t good w needles. I was 18 and scared and I could feel them pressing down on my windpipe trying to get the tissue sample. Traumatizing. The idea that someone else won’t have to do that to get a diagnosis is AMAZING!!!

[lianagheorma]

The medical lab that I work at does cell free DNA tests for cancer patients and suggests the best medications based on the results. So this is already happening. The lab I work at is not the only one. Many big medical laboratories including Quest DX and LabCorp do similar tests. They are a big part cancer treatment nowadays.

[karfsma]

I remember when I had cancer they did bloodwork all the time to check for levels of certain proteins being elevated to like, see if the cancer was still like, active or whatever. and the numbers going back to normal after chemo and surgery. and they used it to determine what was wrong was testicular cancer in the first place

[breakfastgamer]

This is amazing how science can help so many people and I hope that it will get better year by year.

[Dr_V]

As a radiologist I welcome any new non-invasive cancer test options, as imaging often brings out small lesions of unclear etiology and the usual follow-up testing/monitoring, while reasonably effective, means postponing the diagnostic and consequently any kind of treatment options. It's true that up to 80% of these "incidentalomas" as they're colloquially known in our profession (meaning something you accidentally find in patients scanned for a completely different reason) end-up proven benign, but the ones that are actually malignant can take months and sometimes even years to be properly recognized as such, sometimes with catastrophic consequences for the patient.

[lizzykay]

This is amazing, for those of us who have lost people and are worried for our own health, non-invasive testing sounds a lot like hope.

[StitchTheFox]

Im on my way to beating cancer... Already on stage 4, so it shouldn't be much farther.

[memyself]

A couple years ago my advanced cancer was discovered by an ultrasound, which led to a CT scan the next day, which led to surgery a couple weeks later (it would've been much sooner, but insurance set the date), which ended with a pathology report 100% verifying the cancer, and type, and stage.

[RC-]

1:09 "it's never lupus"
(I haven't even watched that show ^_^)

[Virtuous_Rogue]

Pretty cool. My o chem professor did a talk on something similar 8 years ago he was involved with. Apparently cancer sloughs off bits of membrane into the blood stream that close into tiny membrane spheres with much higher curvature than other membranes. He was working on a blood test that measured the concentration of highly curved membranes in the blood as a means of cancer detection. Dr. Hubert Yin is his name of anyone wants to look into it further.

[djschultz]

Been waiting a long time for this research to help early detection of disease. Thank you again SciShow!

[Nikki]

This will be groundbreaking if/when it starts being used in the general public.

[helvijs]

One of the greatest benefits of cfDNA is its ability to give the "whole picture" of TKIs therapy resistance mutations such as T790M within stage IV lung cancers. Why? Well because these tumors form their own populations throughout the body which are heterogenous therefore, lymph node or primary tumor tissue biopsy is not enough to describe the complete picture of the disease.

[DJMKN]

It's crazy how stuff like this isn't on the news

[Furin_]

Got, that really excites me. My father is a smoker, and i'm really worried about what could happen to him. I hope this accessible way of testing becomes the norm

[luminyam]

The news just keeps getting better and better. This is wonderful. Thank you, excellent video.