Graphic Courtesy of Massachusetts General via AP
File under, “awesome emerging medical technologies”: Johnson & Johnson’s prototype
blood test for cancer is being fast tracked to the market. This ingenious new technology is a blood test so sensitive that it can detect even a single cancer cell from a sample taken from a patient. Performed simply in a doctor’s office, this blood test promises to be a boon in the early detection of breast, prostate, colon and lung cancer.
Dr. Daniel Haber, one of the test’s inventors and chief of Massachusetts General’s cancer center says, “This is like a liquid biopsy” that avoids painful tissue sampling and may give a better way to monitor patients than periodic imaging scans.
