Scientists are working to create a pill that would allow doctors to diagnose cancer with a simple blood test. The pill, designed by Stanford Medical School researchers, would cause cancerous tumors to release biomarkers into the bloodstream, and when completed, it would become the world’s most non-invasive cancer diagnosis test.
US researchers led by India-born physician-scientist Sanjiv Sam Gambhir have developed the futuristic method at Stanford University School of Medicine.
The technique has the potential to apply to a broad range of cancers, so someday clinicians might be able not only to detect tumors, monitor the effectiveness of cancer therapies and guide the developments of anti-tumor drugs, but importantly to screen symptom-free populations for nascent tumors that might have otherwise gone undetected until they became larger and much tougher to treat.
“We want to translate this strategy into humans, so we’ve set it up in a way that’s most likely to be effective, safe and convenient,” said Gambhir. It dissolves, releasing tiny particles that are absorbed and cause only cancerous cells to secrete a specific protein into your bloodstream”.
“Two days from now, a finger-prick blood sample will expose whether you have got cancer and even give a rough idea of its extent,” he explained.
Though the minicircles were injected intravenously to the mice for the current study, he said it should eventually be possible to deliver them orally via a pill. About the time for the development of the pill, he said it would take few years and not five or ten years. “We haven’t got it down to a pill yet, but the oral delivery part of this is likely a solvable problem only a few years off, not five or 10 years off,” he said.
But owing to clinical trials, it may take more time, he cautioned. The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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