Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, July 21 (Reporter Zhang Mengran) In a new cancer study, American scientists reported that a non-invasive blood test as a potential tool may be able to test 5 years before routine diagnosis. Early detection of a common cancer-stomach cancer, esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and liver cancer. The related report was published in the British journal Nature Communications on the 21st.

　　According to statistics from the World Health Organization, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the world. From a global perspective, nearly one in six deaths is caused by cancer. Cancer may affect everyone. The appearance of this "demon" will cause a huge burden on patients, families and society. However, late clinical manifestations and failure to obtain diagnosis and treatment are more common.

　　Therefore, if there is a way to detect cancer at an early stage, doctors can remove the tumor by surgery or use appropriate drugs for treatment, and the survival rate of cancer patients will be greatly improved. However, as of now, there are only a limited number of screening tests for a few cancers.

　　This time, researchers from the University of California, San Diego described a blood-based cancer screening test method named "PanSeer". It can check cancer-specific methylation markers in the blood. The research team analyzed plasma samples obtained from 605 asymptomatic individuals, of which 191 were later diagnosed with cancer.

　　They also analyzed plasma samples from another 223 patients with confirmed cancer and 200 samples of primary tumors and normal tissues. Researchers have proved that in patients after diagnosis and asymptomatic individuals 4 years before routine diagnosis, their detection methods are likely to detect the five common cancers of gastric cancer, esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and liver cancer with high specificity.

　　The research team emphasized that the "PanSeer" test method is not to predict patients who will develop cancer in the future. On the contrary, it is most likely to identify patients who have cancer but are asymptomatic under current testing methods. They concluded that further large-scale longitudinal studies are needed to confirm the potential of this detection method to achieve early detection of cancer in individuals before diagnosis.