

Spotting Cancer in a Vial of Blood - lsh123
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/529911/spotting-cancer-in-a-vial-of-blood/

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tomkinstinch
We're in a reactive mode now. Preventive care is the low-cost, high-benefit
future. Novel diagnostics like this are an essential part of that future.

I wish the author would have cited the papers related to this work, if not
inline then as a list of DOIs at the bottom.

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niels_olson
Here's barnstormer paper. Published in 2011, I heard the speaker in 2013, and
I just started another hematopathology rotation and seems like every patient
is getting screened for the six most common mutations. Even if we can't get a
marrow aspirate, we can draw peripheral blood and see what's going on in the
marrow.

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1013343](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1013343)

Now, that's not quite the same as what this article is claiming: that we can
diagnose carcinoma in situ for solid organ tumors from extra-cellular DNA
fragments floating around in peripheral blood, but this is what's clinically
validated and fairly close mechanically: you might be sick aren't symptomatic
yet. Let's draw some blood and see if you're really sick.

