The UK’s National Health Service is preparing for major trials of a blood cancer screening method developed in the United States. The new method may be able to detect 50 types of malignant tumors.
The following year, 165,000 people in England will be offered testing. If the method proves effective, testing will be available to approximately one million Britons by 2024. Trials will also be conducted in the United States, but not on such a large scale.
The company plans to recruit about 6200 volunteers aged 50 and older. The test will also be available in the United States by 2021, but for a fee. The testing of British people will be sponsored by the American development company Grail from California. The first opportunity to take the test will be given to residents of the United Kingdom aged 50 to 79 and several thousand patients in English hospitals who have been identified by doctors with cancer symptoms.
According to the Health Service, this new method could increase the percentage of cancer cases detected at an early stage in the UK from half to 75%. Test Galleri, like many similar tests in development, works at the molecular level. This allows it to detect many types of cancer before symptoms appear. “If we can detect the presence of some 50 cancers, including ovarian and pancreatic cancers, which are very difficult to treat by the time symptoms appear, through a simple blood test, it will mean a lot to thousands of cancer patients undergoing treatment every week,” says Sir Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of the Department of Health.
Scientists in several Western countries have been working on a universal test for many years. In the United States, similar projects are being developed by several organizations, including Johns Hopkins University. Cancer Research UK, the British NGO that funds cancer research, welcomed the plans to test a new test, with the caveat that its effectiveness has not yet been proven. Professor Paul Pharaoh of the University of Cambridge, speaking to the BBC, also noted that the health service “should not invest in such tests until their effectiveness is proven”. The final results of the Galleri trial are expected by 2023.