To diagnose lung cancer, patients have to undergo an invasive biopsy, but that may soon change. Blood-based RNA tests are showing promise in diagnosing cancer, according to a Swedish study recently published in the journal Cancer Cell.

Researchers from Umeå University, along with researchers from the Netherlands and the U.S., investigated how a new method of RNA testing of blood platelets can be used to detect and classify cancer. In total, they evaluated 283 participants — 228 had some form of cancer and 55 showed no evidence of cancer.

They found that the method was able to detect cancer with 96 percent accuracy. In addition, among the 39 participants whose cancer was detected early, all of the cases could be identified and classified.
"Being able to detect cancer at an early stage is vital,” Jonas Nilsson, cancer researcher at Umeå University and co-author of the article, said in a statement. “In the study, nearly all forms of cancer were identified, which proves that blood-based biopsies have an immense potential to improve early detection of cancer.”

The researchers conducted follow-up tests and found that the method can also determine the origin of tumors with 71 percent accuracy in patients with lung, breast, pancreas, brain, liver, colon, and rectal cancer. The blood samples could also be sorted into subdivisions based on molecular differences in cancer form, which is of use when making treatment decisions.

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